If Anathema’s career has been typified by anything, it’s a definite progression. The UK outfit – now in their 21st year – released We’re Here Because We’re Here last year and showed themselves to be fully entrenched in melodic and progressive rock; much of the melancholy that had served as the emotional crux of past works had vanished, and it seemed like even in the album’s most painful moments, the band was aware of the beauty in their sadness. Their newest outing, Falling Deeper (Kscope), follows suit in terms of mindset and doubles as a companion piece for 2008’s revisitation of older material, Hindsight, as well. Falling Deeper, true to its name, delves even further back into Anathema’s formidable catalogue, providing new arrangements and takes on material from some of the band’s earliest releases: the Crestfallen EP (1992), Serenades (1993), and Pentecost III and The Silent Enigma (both issued 1995). But it’s not just new arrangements. Songs like “Kingdom” and “They Die” have been given new life, reborn as gorgeously melodic excursions distilled from their original melodies, which seemed buried at the time under an ash cloud of despair. Dave Stewart, who arranged the strings for We’re Here Because We’re Here exceeds expectation on Falling Deeper, working with the London Session Orchestra, and together with the vocals of Daniel and Vincent Cavanaugh and Lee Douglas, the strings turn the beautifully wretched into just the beautiful. There are those whose sentimental attachments to the original incarnations of these songs will prevent them from enjoying the new versions, but as Anathema’s stylistic development has seen them long since move past their death/doom beginnings, nothing here should really come as a surprise to fans of the band on a conceptual level.

Interesting to note that as Anathema reworks these older songs, they do so with four-fifths of their original lineup intact. Daniel and Vincent Cavanaugh both handle guitar and vocals (the former also keys), brother Jaime Cavanaugh is on bass, and John Douglas drums. Long gone is the forlorn growl of Darren J. White, but with Lee Douglas (sister to John) taking a prominent role here among Daniel and Vincent, and a guest spot from Anneke Van Giersbergen on “Everwake,” there’s a lush complexity to these songs that lacks nothing in its presentation. Still, much of the material has been boiled down from its original form. “Alone” and “Sunset of Age” are the only two inclusions from The Silent Enigma, and as that album could be considered the launch point for the melodic growth that came to bear in the band’s sound over the course of subsequent albums Eternity (1996) and Alternative 4 (1998), it’s not necessarily surprising that they’re some of the most recognizable here. On the other hand, lines like “Is there a reason why you punish our children?/And rape our sisters?” are gone from “We the Gods,” which arrives as an instrumental toward the end of Falling Deeper and is truncated from its original 10 minutes to just over three. Likewise, opener “Crestfallen” plucks the album’s title line from the original version of the song and sweetly repeats it over piano and strings. In less gorgeous arrangements, the entire proposition would be offensive, but as they seem perpetually able to do, Anathema prove that nothing creative is sacrosanct. “Crestfallen” moves smoothly into “Sleep in Sanity,” which was already lyrically minimal in its initial form. Douglas’ drums provide a base for the layers of strings and vocals to triumph without being a complete wash of melody, and together with “Kingdom,” which follows, mark some of Stewart’s best work on the album.

There are ebbs and flows throughout Falling Deeper, and at times like the beginning of “Kingdom,” it feels like the band is hardly there. The song gradually builds though into one of the collection’s most satisfying, a steady undercurrent of percussion reminding of the plod of the original without being out of place, adding to the linearity of the structure. Electric guitar amp noise adds to the climax of “Kingdom,” and a long drone transitions into the piano opening of “They Die,” just 2:13 on Falling Deeper but no less melodically engaging than anything that comes before or after. One thing noticeable in listening is just how much Anathema is able to cull from what are essentially fractions of songs. Nothing here feels incomplete, nothing feels lacking. The songs here are completely different than what they used to be, but there’s a certain liberation in that. Van Giersbergen, whose voice defined in no small part a generation of female lead vocals in European melodic metal, seamlessly works through the verses of “Everwake,” and if anything on the album feels cut too short, it’s that. Fitting that at 3:07, this new take is longer than that which appeared on Crestfallen. It makes sense, somehow.

Falling Deeper finds its apex in the post-centerpiece “J’ai Fait une Promesse,” another expansion at 4:23. The vocals are removed and the strings have a windswept feel that is later met by a soft piano line, sounding like memories, or regrets, or love, or I don’t know what but I want to drown in it. As the track softly gives way to the quiet at the beginning of “Alone,” it’s most apparent that Anathema have lost none of the emotional heft for the change of arrangements. Douglas’ vocal on “Alone,” which sweeps in and through the acoustic guitar, feels like a ghostly complement to what Van Giersbergen did on “Everwake,” and the far off crash of her brother’s drums (it sounds like he’s playing with brushes, but I’m not sure) is a choice opportunity to regain footing after “J’ai Fait une Promesse,” if only for a moment before the instrumental “We the Gods” renews the sense of the ethereal. The piano and strings, which have accounted already for the bulk of the arrangements on Falling Deeper are well combined on “We the Gods,” which seems to do what “J’ai Fait une Promesse” did in turns all at once. I’d argue the former method is still more effective – there’s something haunting about that piano line played all on its own – but the latter is powerful as well. As the finale, “Sunset of Age” arrives with appropriate culmination; Cavanaugh’s vocals are the most prominent on the closer of anywhere on the album, backed by Douglas, and where some of the other material may have seemed like pieces met with the orchestra, they finish with a full-band feel. They never lose themselves in bombast or attempt to turn something that’s not into something sonically abrasive, but there are hits on “Sunset of Age” that sound like hits. Bass drum, guitar and strings all meet up to add percussive drive, and what was growled is now whispered before the grandeur of an electric guitar solo meets with the strings to provide the final apex. As one of the more loyal reinterpretations, the finish feels no less revolutionary.

I said at the outset (or close to it) that some who hear it won’t be able to adjust their expectations of what these songs are, and I stand by that. That, however, is their loss. Anathema’s self-directed iconoclasm results in stunning melody, rich emotionality and a collection of material that feels as reborn as the band itself. They may never revert to the crushing pain they once conveyed through this material, but with the sense of wonder and wholeness these nine tracks pull together in just under 40 minutes, wanting them to be anything other than what they are feels cheap. Falling Deeper is a perfect complement for Hindsight and much more. It stands on its own as a validation of what made these songs so special in the first place, and shows that when it comes to Anathema, no last goodbye is ever necessarily the last goodbye. One only hopes they continue in this vein on their next studio album, though trying to predict where they’ll go next has proven foolish time and again.

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Tags: Anathema, Kscope, Liverpool, UK

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2011 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.