Review & Video Premiere: Lark’s Tongue, Eleusis
Posted in Bootleg Theater, Reviews on February 11th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Lark’s Tongue, “The Novelty Wears Thin” video premiere
[Click play above to see the premiere of Stefaan Temmerman’s video for Lark’s Tongue’s ‘The Novelty Wears Thin’. Album preorders are available from Consouling Sounds.]
Illinois heavy post-rockers Lark’s Tongue release their new album, Eleusis, on Feb. 18 through Belgium’s Consouling Sounds. It has been eight years and an entire universe since the Peoria-based five-piece issued their full-length debut, Narrow (review here), and their post-metal-adjacent take on heavy is presented through Eleusis across six tracks and 44 minutes of consuming, melodic fare, heavy in purpose and tone, but not at all held back by that when it comes to making a given song move. The dual vocals of guitarists Christopher Bennett and Jeff Hyde — joined in the band by synthesist Jonathan Wright, bassist Mike Willey and drummer/percussionist Sledd — play a large role in conveying the emotional crux of the material, as they inevitably would, but the instruments behind do well in setting an atmosphere of marked depth and reach for the stories to take place.
There are moments — looking at you, “Arborist” — where if Lark’s Tongue were from Finland instead of Peoria, you’d call them folk metal, but they’re no less likely to tap John Carpenter via slow-Slayer at the outset of “Folly of Fantasy” or circa-2001-Katatonia in the melody of opener “The Novelty Wears Thin” (video premiere below), signaling with a tambourine that, like Crippled Black Phoenix before them, just because Lark’s Tongue could get blast-your-face-off heavy and aggressive at any given moment doesn’t at all mean it’s going to happen. If anything, they’re all the more post-metal for sounding like they’re actually over it.
I took notes while I was listening to the record — the title of which refers to a site in Greek mythology, a season-based myth of rebirth around Persephone and Demeter, etc. — and I hit a point about seven minutes into fourth cut and presumed side B opener “A Common Denial” (10:32) where I actually typed out “This record is officially better than anyone will ever know.” That may prove to be the case over time — certainly plenty of stellar albums fly under the radar of hype or don’t receive the word of mouth attention they deserve — but given the textures of Eleusis and the obvious care and attention detail Lark’s Tongue have taken here, the record deserves a better fate. To wit, that tambourine in “The Novelty Wears Thin.”
Sledd brings hand percussion to bear in various points of the record, whether it’s “Arborist” or elsewhere, but amid the layers of guitar, keys, bass and drums, the tambourine demonstrates a loyalty to an idea of rhythmic movement that’s older, poppier even. It comes in right where so many bands would click on the distortion pedal and start growling. And much like the psych-prog triumph that takes place in “Folly of Fantasy” or the payoffs of “A Common Denial” (their “Stones From the Sky” moment, admirably made their own) and album-closer “Obsolescence” that seem to be doing work on behalf of the entire record as well as their individual purposes, “The Novelty Wears Thin” is nonetheless righteously heavy. But by not becoming a blowout, by ending with that tambourine, the leadoff signals to the listener that Lark’s Tongue will not be swayed from their own purposes to conform to the expectations of genre. And much to their credit, they never do.
The keyboard and organ work of Wright across the span of Eleusis is a thing to celebrate. On the penultimate “Elucidate” — which is as close to a title-track as they come — Wright‘s keys run alongside particularly vital guitar and a verse that’s near Cave In in its careening, adding flourish to the melodies of the vocals and the drive surrounding; a shimmering edge on top of the heavier distortion. That cut is the shortest of the inclusions at 4:05, but the band still find room to break at around the 2:30 mark and pursue another, more open movement, and there too the keys play an essential role in the atmospheric impression being made, and as far out as it goes in its time, it doesn’t lose sight of the melody led by the vocals.
At any given point on Eleusis, there might be so much going on that it’s hard to ascertain what’s what — I’d have sworn I heard a sax on “Obsolescence” when I first heard it; had me looking for a Bruce Lamont guest spot, to no avail — but the vocals do much not just to unite the material which is instrumentally and structurally varied. All the more since they’re presented with a relatively clean treatment — the arrangements are thoughtful enough to call progressive, as on “Arborist” or the hold-back-then-get-just-a-little-shoutier finish in “Obsolescence,” or even the harmonies on “Elucidate” — the human voice coming through with a minimum of effects.
This sensibility, like that tambourine, makes Lark’s Tongue feel less experimentalist than considered. The album having been recorded by Joel Madigan at Sound of Mind in Illinois between late 2018 and early 2019 — it was done in Feb. 2019; Sanford Parker mixed at Hypercube and Kevin Rendleman mastered at Hive Mind Audio — positions it as a pre-pandemic offering, despite the 2022 release, and there is a sense of the band in the room together that can be heard in stretches like the bassline taking “Obsolescence” for a walk (rather than the other way around) in its early going, almost swaggering on the way before the break to the rolling drums and mounting guitar tension that eventually lead to Eleusis‘ last crescendo, or in the slow punch of “A Common Denial,” which toasts heavy Americana on guitar after refusing to take any time other than its own in developing from its melancholy and vaguely futuristic noise intro.
They sneak in the heavy later. It’s a joy. And they’re not necessarily going for a band-on-stage feel, but using the studio space as a means of bolstering the ambience and lushness of the record as a whole. This blend of careful planning — at least apparent careful planning — and vital delivery is a piece of what allows Lark’s Tongue to have such a stylistic reach here, but any route one takes to get there, it’s a question of songwriting. Of craft. And Eleusis is by no means the kind of record to beat you over the head with a hook — its purposes are elsewhere — but its impact is resonant and memorable just the same.
