I said when the Bell Witch European dates went up yesterday that I’d be posting about the tour again, and The Keening are why. The Portland-based dark atmospheric troupe led by Rebecca Vernon, formerly of SubRosa, will support the Seattle death-doom two-piece for three-plus weeks of road time, and as it’s their first trip overseas, it seemed prudent to mark the occasion.

The Keening‘s debut album, Little Bird (review here), came out last Fall through Relapse, and while it’s of course not Vernon‘s first time traveling internationally for shows, it is that for the group she’s assembled around her to bring this material to life on stage, and given the breadth and heart poured into that record, it’s a set I’d like to see. Having Bell Witch on after to turn your melancholy into an abyssal misery is just a bonus.

Oh, and The Keening were also confirmed for Roadburn today playing Little Bird in full. So there’s that, too.

From social media:

We are beyond thrilled to join Bell Witch on three and a half weeks of their seven-week European tour this April and May.

I’m a longtime fan of Bell Witch, ever since my previous roommate Christian Creek shared their 2011 demo and first album “Longing” with me in 2012 or so. I thought they were one of the most authentic bands I’d ever heard, and seeing them live in Seattle soon after cemented that impression. I was intimidated by the sheer dark power they wielded on stage. Their pain seemed too immense for the room. They were making music to survive. It’s been amazing to see Bell Witch grow and expand over the years into one of the most influential doom bands to grace the metal scene.

From Bell Witch: “In March we embark on an 8 week odyssey across Europe. From the frostbitten North to the Hellenic land of myths in the South, the Emerald Isle to the Balkan states we’re playing many cities for the first time ever…

Along the way we’ll be joined for stretches by friends old & new in FVNERALS, Knoll, Esoteric, Thantifaxath & The Keening. We’re excited to share the stage with bands who bring something truly unique & powerful to their music. Tickets are on sale now at the link in our bio. We can’t wait to see new & familiar faces alike.”

The dates The Keening plays with Bell Witch are below, and the link to tickets is: https://www.bellwitchdoom.net/live

APRIL
23 – Portugalete, ES – Groove #
26 – Madrid, ES – Nazca #
27 – Barcelona, ES – Sala Upload #
28 – Grenoble, FR – Le Ciel #
29 – Martigny, CH – Caves Du Manoir #
30 – Luzern, CH – Sedel #
MAY
2 – Wien, AT – Arena #
3 – Budapest, HU – A38 #
4 – Zagreb, HR – AKC Attack #
6 – Sofia, BG – Clu
7 – Istanbul, TR – Babylon #
9 – Thessalonki, GR – Eightball Club #
10 – Athens, GR – Temple #
11 – Larissa, GR – Skyland #
13 – Caserta, IT – Lizard #
14 – Pescara, IT – Scumm #
15 – Ravenna, IT – Bronson #
16 – Treviso, IT – Altroquando #
17 – Linz, AT – STWST #
18 – Brno, CZ – Kabinet Muz #

Thank you and hope to see you at one of the shows.

https://www.facebook.com/thekeeningmusic
https://www.instagram.com/thekeeningmusic
https://thekeeningmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/thekeening

http://www.relapse.com
http://www.instagram.com/relapserecords
http://www.facebook.com/RelapseRecords
https://relapserecords.bandcamp.com/

The Keening, Little Bird (2023)

The Keening, “Little Bird” official video

It’s been nearly half a decade, but I’m not sure I’m completely over SubRosa breaking up yet. That pioneering post-metallic Salt Lake City outfit, fronted by Rebecca Vernon who founded The Keening after as a solo-project, released their final LP in 2016’s For This We Fought the Battle of Ages (review here), which was encompassing with a clarity of vision and purpose that pushed even further into the atmospheric textures wrought across 2013’s More Constant Than the Gods (review here), defining a sound that could be dead-minimal or unspeakably heavy, was undeniably Americana, and carried emotional presence and outward purpose in its lyrics and delivery across the board. They announced they were done in 2019. I may never get over it. But I kind of understand a bit more. The Keening‘s debut album, the six-song/51-minute Little Bird — on Relapse — puts some distance between Vernon and a doom underground it’s easy to imagine one might’ve been burnt out on if these were the songs looking to be expressed and one felt obligated to a specific tonal assault.

The other four former members of SubRosa have continued on with The Otolith — their debut album, Folium Limina (review here), surfaced last year via Blues Funeral — and begun a new progression off of some of their former outfit’s heavier aspects. If one wants to relate The Keening to SubRosa — as apparently (this) one does — then Vernon is drawing more from the melancholia and the curtain of ambient sadness of that band’s style, and with a modus that’s still very much hers, offering them recontextualized through varying arrangements of acoustic guitar as on the opener “Autumn,” goth church organ on “Eden,” strings and piano throughout, wisps of violin coming and going, and layers of voices alongside Vernon, who worked with producer Billy Anderson (Sleep, Neurosis, Acid King, etc.) and Nathan Carson (drummer for Witch Mountain and now the live incarnation of The Keening; also founder of Nanotear Booking) on the recording in Dec. 2020, following the project’s instrumental piano debut earlier that year on Blues Funeral‘s Women of Doom (review here).

So The Keening isn’t interested in being SubRosa, clearly. What takes shape gradually over the course of Little Bird has more in common with SubRosa‘s Subdued: Live at Roadburn 2016 (review here) semi-acoustic reworkings of their material, but is unmistakably heavier in stretches of “Autumn,” “Eden,” the penultimate “The Hunter II” and in the culmination of extended closer “The Truth” — it’s 17:30, but the almost operatic crescendo is voice as much as instrument (also voice-as-instrument) as part of a wash with guitar, bass, drums, strings, maybe some horns, I don’t even know, circa 13 minutes, and it makes its way out gradually there with room for birdsong and a kinda-sorta-secret track of what might be a harp but was definitely made with elven magic in any case — while remaining true to the structural patterns of Vernon‘s craft, poetic in the lyrics and in the instrumental progressions alike, and evocative of doom in some of its tempos certainly, but so much more intent on texture than impact.

The space in the mix, where it isn’t purposefully left open, is filled with mournful melodies and Vernon‘s voice aligning itself with Appalachian folk as well as modern post-heavy with just that ever-present undercurrent of spit-punk, dynamic arrangements and a style that has all the more forward potential for its malleability, but that doesn’t pull pieces of itself in and out for no reason. That church organ on “Eden” and the heavier roll that ensues as Vernon leads the chorus with the repeated line “Eden is receding” before it drops to keys ahead of the three-minute mark, specifically goth as the strings return and the song realigns for its big push — it would be as weighted as The Keening get but for “The Hunter II” mirroring on side B — but the harmonies after four minutes are even more affecting, and they carry to the end of that movement before a meditation of piano and quietest voice cap the song.

But just as one example drawn from the six inclusions, “Eden” is woven. It’s not haphazard or forced in its changes, and even its last shift to the soft ending is made gently, with silence as a place gone to and returned from. With the flowing violins and echoing layers of vocals, to call Little Bird graceful feels superfluous, but it is anyhow, and no less so as the title-track sweeps through a miniature version of its longer build before resetting in a wistful piano piece for which I’d love to see a lyric sheet, and making its way into a wash that’s preface to “The Truth” (which I guess is side C of the vinyl, or left off it), a kind of centerpiece at nine minutes, but more intimate than sprawling, despite that blossom at the finish.

This hint-at-what’s-coming modus applies to “The Hunter I” and “The Hunter II” as well, with the former flashing an edge of distortion in its early choruses while holding back its own payoff to a kind of droning nod before transitioning into “The Hunter II” with a tension of electric guitar that gives over to soothing folkish Mellotron (or -ish sounds) for an initially drumless two minutes, reimagining ’60s crossover folk until about three and a half minutes into the total of just less than five, Little Bird gets its “Stones From the Sky” moment of dense riffing, complemented by violin, layered in vocals, Vernon returning with the line, “I can’t wait until I die so I won’t see you again,” repeated. Richly progressive folk-informed heavy post-rock and a sick burn to boot. That ending is a surprise, and not the first, but its push leaves little room for argument, and by the time you’re there in listening, you’re long since either on board for the go or not. At that point, Vernon can do basically whatever she wants.

Enter “The Truth.” Beginning with standalone piano, “The Truth” unfurls its troubled landscape in its own time, and keeps a chorus based around, “So I ask you baby/Did the truth set you free?” (with changes in who’s being freed), at its core for this first movement before growing quiet at about five minutes and setting forth on its outbound path through the apex and into a staring-at-the-mountains silence. Perhaps a great asset for The Keening and Vernon as she moves forward with the band will be how pointedly heavy metal Little Bird isn’t, how genuinely moving it is, and how the album might appeal to listeners beyond the heavy underground’s subculture. But that’s a concern beyond the album itself, which repositions Vernon on new ground to explore while retaining the strength of songwriting and performance that made this project so anticipated in the first place.

The Keening, Little Bird (2023)

The Keening, “Little Bird” official video

The Keening on Facebook

The Keening on Instagram

The Keening on Bandcamp

The Keening’s Linktr.ee

Relapse Records website

Relapse Records on Instagram

Relapse Records on Facebook

Relapse Records on Bandcamp

An anticipated return for Rebecca Vernon, formerly of SubRosa. Her solo-project, The Keening, has been in the conversation for four years, but aside from one compilation track, there hasn’t been much output until now. Little Bird will be Vernon‘s debut album as The Keening. It’s set to release Oct. 6 through Relapse, and the first single is the title-track; a nine-plus minute excursion with a richly melancholic melody and an arrangement that’s chamber-heavy in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar from some of Crippled Black Phoenix‘s litany of sorrows, but informed of course by Vernon‘s Americana and folk songwriting style.

I went and saw the Indigo Girls a couple months back, after years of my wife telling me how great they are live. They were brilliant, of course. That’s who The Keening should tour with. They’d blow minds. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll go over well at Decibel Metal & Beer Fest, but the folk in “Little Bird” could have a broader reach too. It’s not pop, necessarily, but there’s an accessibility to the sway of “Little Bird,” I think mostly because it’s beautiful, and that goes a long way.

The PR wire had this on the subject:

The Keening (ex-Subrosa) Announce Debut Album, Little Bird

Watch the music video for the album’s title track now.

Little Bird will be released October 6th via Relapse and the band will play inaugural live performances this fall/winter.

The Keening— the solo music project of Rebecca Vernon (ex-SubRosa)—announce debut album, Little Bird, out October 6, 2023 on Relapse Records. An ultra-melodic foray into haunted bogs, endless wells, secret crimes, jeweled cages and the unenviable curse of being a murder witness abound, Little Bird carries Vernon’s signature sounds throughout— deeply moving passages give away to cinematic, sprawling moments of chambered doom. As dark as this sounds, Little Bird also fills the air with a sense of magic and wonder – there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Keening weaves a web of lush orchestration, American Gothic sensibilities and wintry murder ballads set against a backdrop of dark, shimmering folk. Vernon’s previous band SubRosa echoes in The Keening’s chamber doom, flowing with flute, strings, harp, French horn, piano, organ and hammered dulcimer.

The Keening’s Rebecca Vernon comments: “I’m really excited to finally start releasing this music into the ether, along with the album art, and the music video for single ‘Little Bird.’ I think the film company 10 Seconds to Comply (Ken Whiting, Andrew Bonazelli and Manny OA) and their hired crew did a phenomenal job pulling together this music video and bringing their beautiful vision to light. Thanks to my friend Lucy Sharapata for playing the lead so well, Andrea Morgan and Teresa Byrne for making time to be part of it, and Andrew and his wife Mikki for hosting us at their house! I’m also excited to share the album art – two oil paintings by Lis Pardoe of Portland. Thanks to Relapse Records for making this happen!”

Little Bird, track listing:
Autumn
Eden
Little Bird
The Hunter I
The Hunter II
The Truth

Largely composed at a retreat in Joshua Tree and a friend’s family homestead in Kamas, Utah, Little Bird was recorded in December 2020 at Hallowed Halls in Portland, Oregon with “Engine-ear” Billy Anderson. Anderson’s long resume includes such luminaries as Melvins, Neurosis, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, High on Fire, Bell Witch, Amenra, Agalloch, Cathedral, Cattle Decapitation, Red House Painters, Sick of it All, Sleep, and Swans.

Anderson collaborated with Vernon and Witch Mountain drummer Nathan Carson as co-producers of the recording of the album. A host of Portland’s finest session musicians lent their talents to Little Bird, including Andrea Morgan (Exulansis) on violin. Little Bird was completed in July 2021, mixed by Billy Anderson and mastered by Justin Weis at Trakworx in San Francisco.

See The Keening’s live debut performances this September including headline shows & opening for Agalloch. The Keening will also perform at Decibel Metal & Beer Fest: Denver in December. A full list of announced tour dates is available below.

Pre-Order Little Bird on LP/CD/CS/Digital via Relapse Records here: https://www.relapse.com/

Digital Downloads / Streaming available here: https://orcd.co/thekeening

Look for more news soon from The Keening.

The Keening, on tour:
September 15 Bellingham, WA @ Shakedown
September 16 Seattle, WA @ Clock-Out Lounge
September 22 Eugene, OR @ John Henry’s
September 23 Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom w/ Agalloch, Thief
December 2 Denver, CO @ Decibel Metal & Beer Fest

https://www.facebook.com/thekeeningmusic
https://www.instagram.com/thekeeningmusic
https://thekeeningmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://linktr.ee/thekeening

http://www.relapse.com
http://www.instagram.com/relapserecords
http://www.facebook.com/RelapseRecords
https://relapserecords.bandcamp.com/

The Keening, “Little Bird” official video