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Album Premiere & Review: DEAD, The Laughing Shadow

DEAD

Australian duo DEAD — stylization intentional — release their new album, The Laughing Shadow, this Friday, Oct. 14, through We Empty Rooms (also stylized all one word), Forbidden Place Records and Wantage USA. The follow-up to 2021’s Up Yours and the Victoria-based bass/drums — that’s Jace and Jem, respectively — outfit’s umptieth offering overall, its 38 minutes are marked by a persistent feeling of melancholy that, once you understand the context in which it was made, makes total sense. While recalling Earth and a rawer early Crippled Black Phoenix as they layer in guest saxophone from Jenny Divers and swap out guitar from Jace on “Riding Shadows” and others, DEAD hereby present the work they did together after entering pandemic lockdown.

Which one? I don’t know. Not the first, seemingly. They already put out the last show they played before the first one — the aforementioned Up Yours; also apt in context — and below Jem discusses writing as a two-piece while social-distancing across the room from each other, so clearly they were under restrictions self-imposed or otherwise at the time. Probably they’re lucky they were able to be in the same place at all. That wasn’t the case everywhere. But you hear the standalone sax that closes the T2-esque dirge “Death,” or the foreboding distorted lurch in opener “The Cowboy” — yes, a bit of Morricone there, but not overblown compared to many — and the open space in “Riding Shadows” before the slower-King Crimson-y finish, and the abiding mournfulness wants nothing for justification. They call The Laughing Shadow a ‘pandemic album,’ which has become an acknowledged cliché, something people are ashamed of now, as though processing trauma and grief through art was in some way not one of the most beautiful things human beings can do just because other people are doing it too.

Dead The Laughing ShadowDivers‘ sax plays a significant role throughout, whether it’s that full-sounding finish to “Riding Shadows” or the quiet, improv-feeling “Light, Flicker, Dark” that rounds out side A of the LP or the massive second swell in the subsequent “Disgraced Former Detective,” which ends in a jazzy subdued interplay of bass and drums that hints at a live recording process while also transitioning ultra-smooth into “The Cracking Façade,” represented by a linear build of noise — not even sure what that is — that cuts suddenly to a stretch of quiet bass and drums reminiscent of Neurosis circa The Eye of Every Storm and succeeds in being more than just an epilogue for the loud part prior. DEAD do volume trades particularly well, and perhaps in part because there’s so much room in the recording, their dynamic has all the more space for such fluidity. Jem and Jace have been playing together for 15 years, so that The Laughing Shadow comes across as exploratory as it does is itself a triumph of anti-formula creative spirit, but their experience is bled as much into those minor-seeming-but-not-really-minor stretches as the more outwardly consuming lumber behind the free-jazz crashdown of the penultimate “Bastard Return.”

They close with the rumbling title-track, a bass distortion answering back to “The Cowboy” while also portraying the obvious looming threat that defines (defined? do we even know anymore? did we ever?) the pandemic era. A groove is locked in and pursued with steadily increasing intensity until feedback-as-weapon starts at 3:48 and the tension finally lets up somewhat going into the thud-marked crescendo, followed simply by air-push low end and some final punctuation from the drums; an understated conclusion given some of the plod conjured previously, but appropriately meditative considering, again, the subject at hand and the times being lived through. Therapy for all? At least in an ideal world, yes, and covered by insurance. In our wretched, capitalism-fueled dimension, take your catharsis where you can get it.

It’s my pleasure to host The Laughing Shadow streaming in its entirety below, followed by the already-noted comment from Jem and more PR wire-style details.

Please enjoy:

Jem (drums) on The Laughing Shadow:

This album is the first time we removed our tongues from our collective cheek for a moment. We used it to process our grief and to deal with the uncertainty and anguish of lockdowns. While writing it we lost friends and family to the virus, suicide and more. For the most part funerals or gatherings of any kind were not possible. I clung onto this music like a kid does to their teddy.

As a band who toured nonstop for 10 years it hit hard suddenly not being able to do what we love most. We were determined to make something positive from it. The opening track is the oldest song we have – written some years before we formed DEAD. We decided to build an album around this song that would be one long form piece made up of smaller “scenes”. We pretended we had an orchestra. We wrote the bulk of it in Alex’s barn/recording studio in Campbells Creek – masked up, at opposite ends of the room. We’ve never gone so long without hugging each other.

Our friend Mike Deslandes recorded it in that same barn – it felt significant to be able to do that. We did one take of each scene, in order and the warts are very much left in there for your benefit. The sounds you hear are the sounds of the instruments in that space.

I mixed the record with Mike at his house. I’m grateful we had him working with us. Every part of the process had a different kind of weight to it than before. I wanted it to be over and to never end at the same time. At some point I told Jace that I might have to never play these songs again. So, like a million other bands this is our pandemic album.

Tracklisting:
1. The Cowboy
2. Riding Shadows
3. Death
4. Light, Flicker, Dark
5. Disgraced Former Detective/Silence
6. The Cracking Facade
7. Bastard Return
8. The Laughing Shadow

Recorded by Mike Deslandes at Sound Recordings – Winter MMXXI. Assisted by Alex Bennett | Mixed by Mike and Jem. Mastered by Lachlan Carrick. Released on WeEmptyRooms, Wantage USA (Vinyl Only), Forbidden Place Records (CD Only).

DEAD:
Jace: Bass & Guitars
Jem: Drums & Metal Percussion
Jenny Divers: Sax

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