Like many a rock band Sightings is
comprised of a drummer, bassist and singer/guitarist, but that’s
where any similarities end. The group operates outside the bounds
of traditional musicality without any distinct frame of reference,
adrift in their own weird orbit. Rarely are the three instruments
readily identifiable; in lieu of ‘normal’ percussion the band
favours heavily processed loops and the occasional staccato burst of
machine gun rhythm, and twisted, almost incoherent basslines pulse
ominously away in the background.
It’s Mark Morgan’s guitar sound,
however, that ultimately defines the songs and gives them their
chaotic impetus. Not since the early days of Einsturzende Neubauten
have such godless sonorities been wrung out of the humble
six-string. The resultant sonic landscape is not one that’s easily
assimilated, nor is this the sort of music that one indulges in a
spirit of relaxation or passive enjoyment. Rather this seventh
album from the group, like each of its predecessors, is a
challenging, all out engorgement of the senses.
Sky Above Mud Below brings to
mind nothing so much as The Birthday Party being covered by Crystal
Castles, and the ironically-named Hush amps up the menace to
a beautifully ugly cacophony of Wolf Eyes proportions. Meanwhile the
album’s title track is a moody amalgam of echo-chamber vocals and
barely-recognisable guitars that alternately buzz, whine and squeal
in a furious phalanx of carefully-dosed clatter. The same
self-control isn’t evident in Saccharine Traps, where the
threat of shaking off all restraint is finally realised in a
two-minute dirge of unbridled hostility. As if regretting this foray
into abandon, however, Morgan quickly replaces the screams with
barked snippets of spoken word, hiding his voice behind a wall of
buzzsaw guitars on the inscrutable and menacing Weehawken.
City of Straw is a bombastic,
brilliant and bone-shaking affair. Pulsating bass-driven verses
explode into a squall of car-crash cadences and jagged, spectral
stabs of guitar, usually with as much subtlety as a chainsaw hacking
into metal railing. The end product isn’t a warm sound by any
means, but it is one that’s surprisingly easy to warm to.
