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For his second full-length, Weeks has largely dismissed the guitar in favour of analogue keyboard flavours, haunting and daunting tones prised from Harmonium, Moogs, Omnichord, and Fender Rhodes. It's an imposing record, from the sleeve art's blood soaked snow that surrounds the head of Weeks the victim and the knife of Weeks the victor through layers of keyboard drones and brooding cello to the erratic leads, darting and inquisitive. Weeks' breathy, intimate voice should calm and reassure but, listen closely, and the resignation will overwhelm. This is Nick Drake's romanticism married to a gothic folk, dark and shrouded, devoid of hope. Respite is brief and intermittent, additional flourishes, such as the flute on The One True Song, or the delicate piano on the album's centrepiece I Will Fall To Meet Her are fleeting glimpses into something purer, inevitably drowned amid a surge of distorted bass or unrelenting keys. It's heavy in here.

Matt Dornan
CWAS #9 - Winter 2002

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