Don’t you hate it when the first song on an album temporarily delays the realization that you’re about to sit through 52 minutes of boredom?
What I thought would be something akin to a less-experimental Slint knockoff revealed itself by track two to be the mundane, humdrum collection of vacuous and snore-inducing tunes that it is. And in that seven-minute overture, there are roughly 12 seconds of distorted guitar, a phenomenon that doesn’t present itself again until a few pockets in the ten-minute-long seventh track.
That 10-minute epic is one of the few bright spots on an otherwise dimly lit album, by the way. And hey, I don’t need fuzz to keep me awake, but how about offering something to those of us that aren’t horribly depressed?
Fires in Distant Buildings suffers from soft, monotonous, tortured-soul vocals and quite a bit of jangly, uninteresting guitar. Dull, ancillary keyboards also make a guest appearance. To my chagrin, I must admit to there being a few quasi-engaging lead guitar moments, but nothing even remotely close to saving Gravenhurst from its wearisome self. You might want to throw this on if you’re having trouble sleeping, though.
– Scott Morrow
Gravenhurst (Warp Records)