Pigeonholing a band like Cerberus Shoal is like running with one leg. The unfortunate thing about this is that the leg you’re trying to run on also has a broken ankle. That broken ankle is attached to a foot that only has two toes, and even they have horrible blisters all over them. The bottom line here is that there’s no easy way to describe the sounds and imagery of what you’ll ingest when you dig in to a Cerberus Shoal album. My experience with this album, and a few of the band’s previous albums, tells me that this goes for pretty much every album this Portland (Maine) ensemble has ever released.
Chaiming the Knoblessone is no different from the others, except for the fact that it’s even more experimental. It only took about three minutes in to “Apatrides” to become aware of the fact that I was in for a strenuous assignment trying to write an accurate review of the entire album. The scary thing is that I was only three minutes into the album when I came to this conclusion.
All that aside, there are some truly fantastic moments in this overly-dense experimental album. Most of Chaiming the Knoblessone is layered with hundreds of sporadic sounds that make it hard to focus on any particular moment. However, a song like “Sole of Foot of Man” is thirteen minutes of relaxing improvisation that contains pockets of sheer beauty and spaciousness. The suitably titled “A Paranoid Home Companion” is a dark sounding mish-mash of THX1138-like robotic voices, rhythmic drones, and discordant electronics. I guarantee you haven’t heard a song this bizarre before.
In addition to the instrumentation, there are at least ten different voices that create the illusion that there is something more to a Cerberus Shoal experience than just the music. I imagine there is some type of visual performance that goes along with this music, as it’s one of the most visually demanding albums I’ve heard in quite some time. If you’re into music that is experimental, Cerberus Shoal is a band you must hear. My hunch is that they will soon lead the new genre of musicians in this “psych-rock/folk” genre in the next couple of years. I hope you’re ears are more prepared than mine are.
1. Apatrides
2. Mrs. Shakespear Torso
3. Sole of Foot of Man
4. A Paranoid Home Companion
5. Ouch: Sinti, Roma, Zigeuner, The Names of Gypsy
6. Story # 12 from the Invisible Mountain Archives
7. Scaly Beast vs. Toy Piano
More about: Cerberus Shoal
