"Lesbian Corpse Wolves"? That's one hell of a title! Go figure. Anyway, musically this isn't so far off from a good portion of this curious project's other work, utilizing various stringed instruments to create dark, folk-ish compositions that rely heavily on picking accents and clashing notes that are both melodic and completely discordant all at once. The chief difference this time out is that the vast majority of the vocals are handled by a female singer (Emily Salvatierra), making a guest appearance here. Her voice is quite nice, and I find her singing style, while cleaner than the music, to be a good match for the style, and of course I find that it is a bit easier to digest than the dramatic singing usually present in Dead Raven Choir's work. A guest male vocalist (Matt Rosin) also handles some vocal duties, and his singing is also quite good. Longer pieces such as "The Courtesan" and "A Sibyl" are a bit less explosive as far as note choice and erratic string pressure, especially helping "The Courtesan" flow nicely along. Raw recordings that are very dry and spacious, not to mention as minimal as possible, add to the feeling of the music - which I like. A certain degree of "polishing" could make this material sound far more powerful, but something about the primal simplicity of the approach seems almost mandatory (granted the piano playing does sound quite excellent at times - see "Faded"). All of the artwork consist of close-up shots of paintings of wolves, and despite the fact that the home color printer job isn't fantastic, I really like the way the "booklet" consist of two two-sided card inserts that have each been burned in certain areas to create overlapping visual effects. Very cool. The back of the traycard has an Old Growler beer label attached to it, but I can't say why! As is generally the case with this project the lyrics are omitted, all you get is a tracklist and the lineup of who contributed to the music. Salvatierra is the finest vocal contributor that Dead Raven Choir has ever worked with, so I' love to hear her appear on future releases as well since I'm so finicky, but regardless, this limited edition release is the project's best yet in my opinion. I'd love to hear this direction explored to its full potential. Well done.
[Brazos Valley Meat Authority]
Running time - 32:23, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Faded, The Courtesan, A Sibyl]
Dead Raven Choir - http://wolves.tamu.edu
