CELLAR DARLING - The Spell (2019)

Still a little in-house project, with our trio of Anna, Ivo, and Merlin being the co-credited songwriters for everything, and the only musicians credited for playing on the record.

Track One:  "Pain"

It opens with two clear sounds - a pulsating guitar that'll soon resolve into a background metal riff, and a lively hurdy-gurdy overlay that basically acts as the lead stringed instrument, handling the main riff.  This will be a recurring theme.  Once Anna starts singing I hear hudry less, and the song seems a little less hard-rocking than you'd think, although it's got a bit of a rock chorus.  The best hook here is the "day in, day out" part.  The best section is the instrumental break in which the opening progression serves as the basis for a full-on hurdy solo.  The lyrics are cryptic and some delivered in a breathy wispy style that I don't love, but I gather that either Death or a human child is being scapegoated or something, setting the scene for....

Track Two:  "Death"

Again, starts with a heavy riff.  Again meanders away into a slower-moving piece once the vocals take over.  Here the melody line is trying to sound warm and welcoming as Death presumably welcomes us (or the other character) into his embrace.  The chorus is... fine.  Better than the first song, but nothing special.  Again Anna and Ivo pass rifflines back and forth between instruments, as the band makes it clear what vibe they're setting.  A little over three minutes into this seven-plus minute track, the first (very welcome) appearance of a flute adds a nice new dimension to the middle portion.  Used sparingly, a fast flute line can give a jolt of energy without compromising on the "haunting" thing.  This is followed by the song briefly getting loud and desperate before settling back into its usual mid-range groove.  It's like two minutes' worth of doing everything possible to try to elevate an otherwise average tune.

Track Three:  "Love"

"Take me to the underworld..."  The first song unambiguously with the human character's perspective, "Love" is clearly the best track so far, thanks in large part to Anna switching to the keyboard heavily for the first time (although there's some complementary hurdy-gurdy too) and producing a neat little melody that dovetails very melodically and pleasingly into the chorus.  This is some solid pop-metal here.  I'm even okay with the sing-songy "when in love when in love with the darkness" part - maybe I'm just in a good mood - because sounding a little more naive is in character with the picture being painted.

Track Four:  "The Spell"

The first thing to ever get stuck in my head from this record was "from roots* to moons," sung over and over and over.  I don't think that's really a good thing, since it's kinda insipid.  There's not much else here, focusing on atmosphere and plaintive vocals.  Here the hurdy gurdy acts as a rhythm guitar... as does the actual rhythm guitar.  Anyone actually wanna play lead here?

So, if the girl was already in love with Death, and the spell is being cast by him ("Death is my name"), uh, wait, who needs a spell?  Death on himself so he can reciprocate?  I'm trying to pay attention to the overarching story, but can't shake what a thin premise it is.

Track Five:  "Burn"

"Burn" is an easier track to sort of appreciate from a distance than to enjoy, for me, and yes, this is very much a theme.  I can discuss promising elements - a solid seeming straight ahead hurdy melody placed over an arpeggiated Dream Theater esque guitar line with some creepy whispered vocals mixed in with the usual singing.  There are elements.  Was it pleasant?  Sure.  Did it hold my attention?  No.  Having just now listened to it, can I even remember how it goes?  Nope.

Track Six:  "Hang"

Oh look, a mid-tempo dirge, wow.  Here's a slow descending melody in which none of the instruments seems to have any interest in moving things along.  At least this one lets the vocals take center stage so we get a sense of how dark they're willing to go - basically, ooh, this looks like such a nice tree from which to tie a noose and have a peaceful little swing, "make the voices die forever."

Track Seven:  "Sleep"

All piano and voice, the former doing a minimalist part, and then a few sound effects, and then a tiny bit of minimalist acoustic guitar at the very end.  This'd be a great interlude or change of pace track on a record with more sonic variety.  In the final half minute, the keys play a few deliberately dissonant chords.

Track Eight:  "Insomnia"

As the closing lyrics of the last song suggested, sleep isn't actually coming to our protagonist.  As the proverbial needle drops on "Insomnia," big chugging guitars come in, sounding bigger than they have all record.  Anna goes big with the vocals too, although throwing in a bit of a raspy undertone that makes me wish she weren't so shy about doing the black/death growls that we've heard her bust out from time to time.  The "and I will not sleep until you hold me" section is catchy and more intense than The Spell usually gets, in its desperation and increasing fixation with death.  

Hey, contrasting a soft song with a loud one is an ancient trick, and artists keep going back to it because it's a classic.  "Insomnia" sounds great in its own right, but as the dark partner of "Sleep" it's just *chef's kiss*.  That's even before the narrator's search takes us through several different movements that include a killer hurdy-gurdy solo, followed by an uneasy piano part that turns into a wall of sound once augmented by moaning wordless vocals and punchy drums. 

 

Track Nine:  "Freeze"

And after the intensity of "Insomnia," the poppiness of how "Freeze" starts is welcome.  Turns out the latter song is pretty intense too, pairing a loud chorus with a soft verse like the grunge bands used to do.**  Suddenly Cellar Darling are firing on all cylinders with the vocal melodies, with both the verse and the chorus both being among the catchiest melodies on the record.

Track Ten:  "Fall"

A very smooth transition makes it hard to even notice that we're on a new track.  What can I say?  A short transitional track about falling.

Track Eleven:  "Drown"

I like the idea here, with the loud-soft alternation.  There's soft wispy singing paired with hurdy-front lines or even just sound effects, that alternates with the part with the downtuned nu-metal guitars that's literally about 30 BPM faster, together embodying the dichotomy between peaceful surrender to the waters and gasping for life.  The song's ratio of length to hooks is too high to make it a real classic, though.

Track Twelve:  "Love, Pt. 2"

I do enjoy the vocal line here even if I "should" recoil at the sing-songy tone.  With the repetition of phrases like "you will be whole once the sun is up" and "I don't want to go," I guess I take this as the musical equivalent of the old chestnut about the moment of clarity after jumping off a bridge.*** 

Track Thirteen:  "Death, Pt. 2"

Anna takes us out with eerie heavy key progressions and moaning background vocals.  I guess this is Death reversing whatever the roots-to-moons spell was, but turns out, the other character's change of heart doesn't mean she doesn't die.  Not much of a twist, really.  The song is decent and has some good piano work, especially when it resolves into the tune from "Love" at the very end.  I don't have much else to say.

 

Isolated single that didn't neatly fit anywhere else:  "DANCE"

So the 2021 track "DANCE" appears to be Cellar Darling's sole recorded output of the 2020s thus far.  Way longer (10:47) and moodier than one would expect from a song called "DANCE."  The big thing the track has going for it, besides the incorporation of fun words like "choreomania," is a serious chorus in which the guitar and hurdy hold a single open chord while Anna chants "gara amun ian a friar," which is haunting enough that I would not have figured out that it's an invented nonsense phrase if I hadn't just looked it up.  After a simple verse-chorus-verse-chorus progression, the middle section of "DANCE" has an arresting flute section that ends before it can really develop, a nice key section that lasts longer but doesn't really develop, and then a cool soaring vocal that sounds like limbs being torn apart before going back to the chorus and bridge from earlier.  I cannot say it seems surprising at all to learn that this one started life with the The Spell sessions before they decided to hold on to it and refine it into its own thing.

I mostly like "DANCE" for the hook; can't deny it's a real hook.

Other comments:

As I'm sure comes through in the track by track, I appreciate a lot of what The Spell is trying for whilst feeling unconvinced that it quite sticks the landing.  In some ways the record could be considered a triumph.  The Spell proves that Cellar Darling are their own band with a distinct sound, highlighting some of the elements that worked so well on This Is The Sound standout "Redemption," without the failed experiments with different styles that marred the debut.  The Spell proves that it's possible to build a metal record around a hurdy-gurdy as the lead instrument, and that's something. 

I don't think the band is quite there yet.  I acknowledge that some of it may be taste - the particular thing they're doing isn't really hard rock or even necessarily metal most of the time, and I'm a rock/metal guy.  Quality metal makes me want to bang my head, quality folk makes me want to sing along lustfully.  Eluveitie at their best make me want to do both. The Spell accomplishes neither of those things, for me.  I'd just personally want just a dash of "Black Moon" on my giant platter of "Redemption," I guess.  Even if I'm speaking out of ignorance, though, I have to speak: I think the issue is that the concept is underbaked and the songs just aren't consistently interesting.  Needs better melodies, simple as that.  The trio of "Sleep"/"Insomnia"/"Freeze" speaks to the potential of what the trio of musicians is capable of achieving.  The rest of the record is not up to that level, for me.

Completely unsolicited, you know what my worthless advice would be?  Cellar Darling should recruit a full-time pianist/keyboardist.  I'm sure there's a certain appeal in keeping it to just a core group, and obviously, I get that studio magic means that any number of people can play any number of parts.  The way I see it, though, is that Ivo approaches both his bass and guitar parts like a rhythm guitarist, as he's always been.  His style was a great fit for the seventeen-person band in which he needed to supply riffs but fade into the background often.  In a three-person band, it means he's ceding the main line of every song to Anna.  And Anna shows some flashes on the keys... that make me imagine how this music could be more powerful with the help of someone at the top of their game handling the piano and co-driving the song, freeing up Anna to go nuts with the hurdy-gurdy, the instrument with which she's most virtuosic.  (Okay, she can work in a little flute here and there too, as she does.) 

To use an imperfect analogy, if This Is The Sound was a Vên-like flawed proof of concept, then The Spell is their Spirit, a still flawed but more confident, cohesive effort that sees the band figuring out what they do and don't want to do.  They seem a pretty good distance away from their Slania, though.  I'll keep a casual eye out to see if they ever put out anything more interesting.  It could happen.  Or not!

An aside:  A livestream that the band did during the early days of COVID, and presumably their live show in general from that time includes some spoken word linking parts that presumably help frame the story.  I wonder what went into the decision not to include them on the record and let the songs speak for themselves.

Another aside:  The mostly single-word track titles seem like they're telling a sort of palindrome story, when placed side by side:  Pain, Death, Love, The Spell, Burn, Hang, Sleep, Insomnia, Freeze, Fall, Drown, Love (Pt. 2), Death (Pt. 2)

Favorite track (album only):  "Insomnia"

Runner up:  "Freeze"

Least favorite:  "The Spell"

Rating:  3/5

Definitive running list of records by Eluveitie and Cellar Darling that I have listened to so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Origins

2)  Everything Remains (As It Never Was)

3)  Slania

4)  Ategnatos

5)  Helvetios

6)  Spirit

7)  Evocation I - The Arcane Dominion

8)  The Spell [Cellar Darling] 

9)  Evocation II - Pantheon

10)  This Is The Sound [Cellar Darling] 

11)  Vên

My own little project concludes, for now, with another Eluveitie odds-and-ends post, whenever I get around to it!

 

* Or is it "runes?"  That'd make at least as much sense.  The transcribed lyrics on the internet say "roots," FWIW

** Although if we have to compare this music to music that already exists, Anna's off-kilter vocals on the songs that involve minor key piano parts are closer to Tori Amos than to anyone from Seattle.

***The jumper realizes that the fact that they just jumped off a bridge is their actual unfixable problem.