The Benja-man Is Verbose

I came to a realization about what I most dislike about Cherry Tree ’s much-maligned (by me, and apparently nobody else) opener, “Wasp Nest.”   It’s not the bland instrumentation, although it’s not that interesting to me.   It’s not those damn bells, although I do find them annoying.   My biggest issue is Matt Berniger, plain and simple.   I don’t like his poor-man’s Dylan vocal approach of mumble-singing without putting a vocal melody to it.   I don’t like his specific inflections, and in particular, his delivery of the line “I wanna kiss your skinny throat” makes my skin crawl in a way that distances me from the song rather than pulling me in.   I don’t like the lyrics on this particular song, and more generally I don’t like the fact that seemingly 90% of his lyrics are about the narrator being condescending towards a woman.     Moving on to “All The Wine,” this one does have a solid hook and a more interesting lyric, and more energy to it.   But then there’s Matt doing the same

I won’t be doing the Vên EP since my streaming services don’t have it in its original form.   I don’t know where the hell a re-recorded version of the already re-recorded “Uis Elveti” will fit in my attempts to get a chronological sense of this band’s evolution.   Instead, I start the project with Eluveitie already having achieved its near final form, as a nine piece of non-session musicians.   In addition to Chigrel, guitarists Ivo Henzi and Siméon Koch are both on board by this point, as are drummer Merlin Sutter and fiddler Meri Tadić.   So, here’s their true debut, Spirit .   Track One:   “Spirit”   I’m only going to know what the English songs are about, to be clear.   This is the ever-popular “intro track,” just a few simple musical ideas repeated over and over.   But the chanted vocals are nice, especially paired with what sounds like a hurdy-gurdy despite no gurdyist being credited.   Makes you want to ride a horse in dramatic slow motion.   Track Two:   “Uis Elveti”

  Whilst I continue to work up the motivation to press on with Cherry Tree and beyond, the next band that's going to be concurrently taking up many strokes of a virtual pen will be Swiss folk-metal band Eluveitie.   The story behind this decision isn’t that interesting, but in brief, I’m always trying to discover new artists – I mostly focus on records that came out during the year that it is so my new music is new-new, but I’m trying to get better about also delving into the recent and less recent past.   I often have YouTube videos playing in the background while I work on certain things.   One channel (reaction channel “The Kel N’ Rich show”) featured a song by Eluveitie.   I was mildly intrigued, and decided to give a few listens to an Eluveitie record chosen at semi-random – knowing nothing other than it was the final record before the Cellar Darling split (see below), I went with 2014’s Origins .   And I was fucking blown away.   Origins very quickly became one of m