This is what blues sounds like, when its emotional fervency has made room for a kind of cranky tiredness. On their fifth studio-record, the Canadian band Timber Timbre keep showing us their very own version of African-American folk music. The guitars often sound as if they’ve been stolen from some creepy granny’s attic, and the grindy sound of an organ does its share in making this blues stumble into our room, drunk of mystical occultism. This is the sound to which a washed-up devil sits down at a trucker-bar, drinks one too many beer and then dances a tipsy waltz with the barmaid in the dim light of an old disco-ball. Timber Timbre present their music in such a casual – and seemingly uninterested – manner that its instrumentation (consisting of saxophones and other toys from the soft-porn-box) never drifts off into glamorous or kitschy spheres. Even when the instruments join together in order to have a go at great emotions, the album does not leave its dreamy path between the worlds. This is mostly due to Taylor Kirk’s unmistakable voice, which hovers above the music uncontrolledly, yet with somnambulistic reliability in its rhythm; like a drunkard stumbling across a funfair. It’s a record that keeps creating images of a neon-light room filled with smoke. Whatever else it does: Everyone can turn into a disillusioned whiskey drinker when listening to »Hot Dreams«, be it only for one record-length.
Hot Dreams
