Word: tracks
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...Harvard. Four televisions showcase work by current students and recent alums. Another screen shows a short film of the exhibition’s co-curator, Terah L. Maher, along with the sheets of clay sandwiched in Plexiglas that were used to make the movie. The students’ films track a wide range of graphic and conceptual complexity. A work by Lisa A. Haber-Thomson ’02 consists exclusively of stick figures, but deals with the beautiful image of a woman trying to stitch together a torn book as letters pour out of it to the sound...
...record opens with “Pray for Rain,” a song composed with such a hypnotic vigor that it risks eclipsing most of the tracks to come. A seething piano loop winds its way through cascading drum fills while Tunde Adebimpe (of TV on the Radio fame) warbles chilling lyrics laced with somber imagery—“Dull residue of what once was / A shattered cloud of swirling doves.” The song also has a more distinct arc than any other on the album. It’s the only track with...
...starts with the simple, skeletal chiming of piano and the glassy ambiance of vibraphone. A heavy bass line kicks in soon thereafter, and drives the song to the album’s musical apex. Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval lends her voice to this particular track, and her airy recitation of the lyrics only adds to the disquieting mood of the song. “Oh well, the devil makes us sin,” she coos, “but we like it when we’re spinning in his grip...
...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...
This incongruity continues until the fourth track, “Fortune,” on which the band’s intentions are beautifully realized. The absence of heavy handed and uninteresting electric guitar riffs—which in previous tracks drown out otherwise intricate instrumentation—allows the acoustic guitar to shine through. Smith’s clear and tender vocals are here successfully highlighted. Liberated by the more varied melody, Smith weaves a narrative that is less mournful and more hopeful than those of the other tracks. For just over two minutes the clouds part, and Midlake...