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Opening track “Acts of Man,” sets the tone lyrically and harmonically for the rest of the album. The song is rather static: Smith sings within a restricted vocal range, and the lyrics consist of a repeated chant: “If all that grows starts to fade, starts to falter / Oh, let me inside, let me inside, not to wait / Great are the sounds of all that live / And all that man can hold.” While the lyrics refer to both the barrenness of winter and earth’s hidden bounty...
...album ends with “In the Ground,” which sounds quite similar to the first track, “Acts of Man.” The subject matter, vocals, and music all have exactly the same feel, showing how the album lacks overall direction. Just as each individual song feels static, lacking a swelling or diminishing of emotion, the album as a whole shows no development through the tracks, and we feel that Smith hasn’t taken us anywhere. That said, Midlake offers its fans an instrumentally original, if not enthralling, listen. Unfortunately, though...
...with the electronic beats and synth effects, rising to a quasi-falsetto on the chorus as he sets the album’s romantic mood with an endearing pun: “I only want to be your one life stand / Tell me do you stand by your whole man?” Vocals are given similar emphasis throughout the album’s slower tracks, including the beautiful “Slush,” which transfixes with its contemplative simplicity as Taylor’s singing weaves and dips against simple backing vocals. This focus on Taylor?...
...comprehension of society’s penchant for forcing what is foreign into a controllable compartment. “Dance with Snakes,” originally published in 1996 and now translated by Lee Paula Springer, is a four-part frenzy, a detailed depiction of the chaotic hell one man and four murderous snakes engender. Superficially a fantastical page-turner, the novel is at its core an uncompromising interrogation of authority, a gruesome satire whose pivot turns on exposing the consequences that result from a manipulated identity...
...with Snakes,” is an unemployed and restless sociologist who becomes obsessed with a beat-up yellow Chevrolet that parks on the street across from his apartment. Sosa follows its owner—the wretched Jacinto Bustillo—for one day before he unceremoniously kills the man and discovers his secret: Bustillo owned a group of talking snakes, a tetramer of assassins Sosa takes to fondly calling his “ladies.” The snakes, who Sosa names Beti, Loli, Valentina, and Carmela, are the impetus for his transformation into Bustillo; terrified when he first...