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| TRACKLIST |
| 1. Rings of Saturn . . . . . . .4:47 2. The Next Village. . . . . . .5:29 3. Showers in Summer . . . . . .5:33 4. Breathing Space . . . . . . .4:22 5. Gardens of the South. . . . .4:12 6. Red King. . . . . . . . . . .4:02 7. On the Beach at Aldeburgh . .6:54 8. A Spiral Not Repeated . . . .3:59 9. The Cartographer. . . . . . .3:30 |
| QUOTE (Pitchfork - Rating: 8.0) |
| It's only fitting that the first thing you hear on In The Gardens of the North is Markland Starkie's voice. After all, collaborators and live-show bandmates notwithstanding, Sleeping States is Markland Starkie. The "group" began as a self-sufficient one-man operation back in 2004, though enough people eventually got hip to Starkie's potent and heady lo-fi brew that he didn't need to continue self-releasing his music. It doesn't hurt that some of these folks have impeccable pedigrees-- members of Grizzly Bear and the Klaxons have given Sleeping States some free press, and the label that currently pays Starkie, Bella Union, is run by former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde. Gardens is actually Sleeping States' second Bella Union release-- the first was an EP, Old vs. New, wherein Starkie re-recorded some of his older tunes. Even at only five songs, its stylistic careening between gussied-up punkish fervor and soothing indie-rockery showed Starkie to be as restless and precocious as he is talented, and served as an appropriate portrait of what Sleeping States were at that point. But one listen to "Rings of Saturn", the first track off Gardens, and the notion of Sleeping States as the brainchild of a pastoral yet hyper-caffeinated lo-fi mad scientist quickly falls away. Starkie sings in a breathless lilting croon, a voice that might remind some of a less bombastic Rufus Wainwright. Most of the song is just Starkie gracefully navigating a halting and beguiling melody as a bass guitar is steadily strummed. The words he sings are equally beguiling, offering haunting images of "bones of lost towns" and "the coast at your cheek," which lend the song a nostalgic and melancholy air. The circular guitar figure that enters after a minute of this adds to the mood. But this gentle setting is gradually intruded upon-- first by a queasy bed of feedback, then (courtesy of Rose Clark, Starkie's only collaborator on Gardens) rolling, crashing drums. These interlopers slowly emerge from the background of the song like shadowy figures walking out of a thick fog. Soon Starkie stops singing, and lets the intruders have their way. While all this is going on, however, the bass remains steadfast, weathering this ever-growing storm, playing the same sequence of notes it's played since the track began. As the noise slowly relents, Starkie's voice returns, offering more fragmented phrases that ache with an unspecified longing-- "every day, so many times, we never see you anymore," "this is what you let us see," "impressions of the morning sun"-- until the song reaches a resigned conclusion. "Rings of Saturn" covers a lot of ground in its five minutes, ground that Starkie's previous work merely hinted at in passing, if ever. If this track was meant to introduce listeners to a more mature and self-assured Sleeping States, then they made one hell of a first impression. Gardens finds Starkie ably synthesizing lessons learned from his DIY home-taping years into fully-realized songs of all shapes and sizes. It's to his credit as a songwriter that the weakest tracks on Gardens are a) the most ordinary and b ) weak only in comparison to their surroundings. Perfectly fine tunes like "Red King" or "The Cartographer" might be highlights on someone else's record, but they pale in comparison to the magic Starkie works throughout the rest of the album. When he cuts away from the pensive tension he's been building in "Showers in Summer" to let the song briefly pause and breathe, switching from tight snare rolls and expectant guitar plucking to gentle rushes of cymbal and guitar picking, it's like the sun briefly breaking through the clouds as the rain relents. "Breathing Space" is that moment of pause and reflection extended, Starkie filling the space with casual strums of guitar, the ambient noise of a lazy city street, and his enviable voice multi-tracked behind him, posing as an acrobatic angelic chorus. His voice being his best instrument, Starkie wisely employs it as much as he can, and often to fantastic effect. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the pseudo-title track, "Gardens of the South". In some ways, the track's sparseness mirrors that of "Rings of Saturn", except that in this case it's the drums providing the song's steady rhythm as multiple Starkies sweetly swoon and dive around the narrator's unabashed and unapologetic desire-- "When you ask if I've been saying too much/ I reply, 'I can tell by your eyes and your hands/ That you haven't said enough.'" If there's anything negative to say about Gardens, it's that it doesn't lend itself to casual listening. These restless and nearly immaculate tales of love and longing, when taken in as a whole, might blend together to form a tastefully indistinct blur. That was never an issue in Sleeping States' past, when an album would change gears without either hesitation or purpose. The closest this album comes to offering that sort of pace-change is with the ever-so-brief guitar squeal that opens "On the Beach at Aldeburgh". But exchanging that sort of free-and-easy inconsistency for a steadier and more stately hand, if it leads to works like this, is a trade-off worth making at every opportunity. The restless spirit that fueled Markland Starkie's previous work is still present. It's just being expressed in a way that demands your attention instead of distracting it. And the attention that In the Gardens of the North demands, it rewards tenfold. |
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| SPOILER! |
YOUTUBE
Rings of Saturn > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iaLAhW4O_o
Showers in Summer > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzUo0aIL-Gc
Gardens of the South > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jstK6TjmdQo