“Water Here“
from the album A Certain Feeling
2008
iTunes
Los Angeles’ Bodies of Water are a group that conglomerate as many sounds as their name would suggest. Essentially a four piece, they don’t yield at that number; and despite the full-bodied bombast that their adaptive ensemble enables, their tailored core always returns to the juxtaposition of Meredith and David Metcalf’s vocals.
The first seconds of A Certain Feeling begin with Meredith’s bare vocal poise, soon followed by David’s. Their angelic melancholy beckons a theatrical build, soon becoming a musical call to arms that brings to mind the Arcade Fire.
This allusion is somewhat inevitable, with their church organ fixations and a choral style developed by the alternating vocals of the Metcalf’s married partnership. Yet the musical segmentation within their songs brings together a palette with a far greater array of touchstones.
“Under the Pines” opens with a haunting organ in that similar Arcade Fire vein, but is then confronted with a heady riff that sounds like the suspense cue of the eighties Bowie film Labyrinth, which could probably more popularly be tagged to Black Mountain. Growing into a tribal-war-dance that meshes with a quirky guitar coined more closely to Pete Doherty, well: you have the beginning of what seems to be Bodies of Water’s ability not to create songs so much as suites.
“Water Here” steps in as though it’s going to be a free jazz rumble, before taking a sharp turn to choral harmony, stopping for a post-rock fumble, then riding it off like a gypsy clan dressed in lead vests. It then wags all the way back to stage one with a soul-meets-disco horn getaway.
“Darling Be Here” starts off almost like a cleaner Sabbath track; “Keep Me On” has a guitar solo that sounds to be tipping its hat to David Gilmour-enchanted Floyd; “If I Were a Bell” starts like the sequel to (yes) the Arcade Fire’s “My Heart is an Apple,” and then moves itself back out into the wild blue yonder of musical diversity. Nothing short of majestic, at time brushing on cliché, A Certain Feeling is a polished stitching of sounds that could send a ship to sea.
For their first official release on Secretly Canadian, Bodies of Water sound concise, powerful and eclectic. It’s a lot like the musical score of a feverishly well-developed high school play; melodramatic and overreaching, but nailing that persona on the head.