Review & Track Premiere: Orango, Evergreens
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on November 23rd, 2018 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream ‘Evergreen’ from Evergreens by Orango. Album is out Nov. 30 on Stickman Records.]
The tale of a band stripping down their approach is familiar enough. A group push in one direction, decide to go in another. There are degrees to which it’s perceptible to the listener and degrees to which it happens in an artist’s head or in how a recording is actually made in a studio, but it’s not a wild, unheard-of concept by any means. As it applies to Oslo’s Orango and their seventh full-length, Evergreens (released by Stickman Records), the trio effectively pull back on some of the more lush aspects they presented in the early hours of 2017 on The Mules of Nana (review here) in order to affect a more straightforward and driving approach. For the first six songs. Yes, Orango — comprised of guitarist Helge Bredeli Kanck, bassist Hallvard Gaardløs and drummer Trond Slåke, all of whom contribute to the oft-harmonized vocal pastiche — cut back on some of the more progressive leanings and dig into classic boogie and heavy rock. For the first six songs. It’s a hook-fest that taps into essential groove and memorable stretches like that in the particularly Southern-tinged “Hillside Man.” For the first six songs.
But when Evergreens flips over to side B after the tight three and a half minutes of “Sunny Bay,” it unfurls the 16:18 sprawl of the semi-title-track “Evergreen” and that seventh and final song completely changes the narrative of the record. Yeah, they execute taut and controlled songcraft even in the shuffling 2:40 of “Blue Heart,” the first minute of which is an intro to the forthcoming organ-and-fuzz-drenched boogie, but when the soft guitar introduces “Evergreen,” everything changes. It’s not just that it’s a shift in mindset. It’s that, on their seventh LP, Orango have willfully chosen to distinguish between two sides of their style that were closer together on a prior outing. Usually one thinks of a band melding disparate elements over time. Orango here perform a chemical separation, and the results are both fascinating as an experiment and in the material resulting.
Orango are by no means the first band to sit a much-longer piece at the end of an album of shorter and more straightforward tracks, but what stands out about their doing so on Evergreens is just how stark and purposeful they’ve made that separation. Not just in that it’s two different vinyl sides; it’s two different missions. But for the consistency of tone and the harmonies that seem to tie everything together no matter where the band might go in an individual track, it’s almost as though Evergreens was made as two separate mini-albums put together. From the Mountainous riff that starts “Glow Out of Time” and through the KISS-style urbanity of the subsequent “Loco,” also the catchiest of the bunch here, Orango set a path that even casts off some of the Southern rock vibe that their earlier work brought to bear on albums like 2004’s Villa Exile or 2011’s Confessions, and none of that feels like an accident.
Seven records and a career that spans more than a decade, plus being a band who put so much time and clear thought into their arrangements, vocal and otherwise, it’s easy to give Orango the benefit of the doubt on knowing what they want to do in the studio and to have a fair conception of how an album will turn out when it’s done. Even if their songwriting process just naturally led to the disparity between one side of Evergreens and the other, they still would’ve been likely to understand how that would manifest when it was all pressed to the same platter. One can only assume, then, that the creation of that disparity was a part of the project, if not initially, then certainly by the end. So be it. “Evergreen” has its stretch of verses and choruses following its gradual intro and preceding a turn just after the six-and-a-half-minute mark to a quieter, organ-led section of meandering guitar and classic prog atmospherics.
Earlier, “Old Shores” carried wistful nostalgia through in a hooky verse and the aforementioned “Sunny Bay” gracefully mellowed out following the all-go “Blue Heart,” moving into subdued wah guitar and a bluesier feel. So “Evergreen” isn’t without context. One of the most successful aspects of Orango‘s construction of the album as a whole is how well it flows, and that includes all seven of its tracks and the full 37 minutes they run. But still, in its intro and in the section after the already-noted break, “Evergreen” is inherently distinct from everything else on the record that pluralizes its name. They bring the flow almost to silence, and having gone all the way down, bring it all the way back up. Vocals are sparse but not absent, a flute shows up, and the guitar, bass, organ and drums surge forward after 11:45 into a secondary chorus that carries them further toward the apex of the track. After a last held-out note at 14 minutes in, they’re ready to take off, and they launch into a long, solo-topped instrumental finish that becomes increasingly noisy as it moves to its inevitable conclusion but cuts hard at 15:45 in order to make a sharp turn to a quiet blues lick that actually finishes out.
That sudden last turn is crucial to understanding Evergreens as a whole, because it’s so representative of the band’s overarching mindset of making their songs do exactly what they want them to do. It’s analogous to the release in how it puts two seemingly opposing ideas together and makes them function toward the same end — in this case, the end of the album. As noted, Orango are by no means the first band to strip down their approach, but the fact that they seem to have done so while transposing all the prog textures and structure that might’ve been in the other six tracks into the seventh makes Evergreens all the more an intriguing listen. And not to be lost in the discussion of the structure and mission at work throughout is the fact that Orango completely pull it off. Not only do they make “Evergreen” fit alongside its shorter companion pieces, but they remind throughout that in songwriting and performance they’re one of the most strikingly underrated acts in the European heavy underground. All this and a little bit of flute, too, saved for when its appearance is most effective. One would expect nothing less.
