at: http://gumshoegrove.blogspot.com/2009/10/listenlisten-hymns-from-rhodesia-old.html

Listenlisten - Hymns from Rhodesia - The Old Murksville Forest [Album Review]

A subtle but all-powerful force has been preventing me from reviewing this record, with its pretty gold-foil stamping and baskerville-style album art/fonts. At first I felt I needed more time, as Hymns From Rhodesia (listen there ---->) is super-loooong and super-involved.

Then, I lost the damn thing in my endless Pile and didn't recover it from the wreckage until just the other day. Hey, it happens; I'll thank you to give me the benefit of the doubt on this one, sir/ma'am.

Besides, there's no time like the present to make up for misdeeds. As such I present to you Listenlisten's Hymns From Rhodesia, an earnest, gothic-(NOT goth; big difference)tinged album with a story to tell so detailed and opaque it almost gets religious.

We're talking biblical proportions here, people; songs about death, life, redemption, colonization, humans and apes, pilgrims, "golden" cities and much, much more. Comparisons seem so vulgar when so much work has gone into the final product -- did I mention HFR comes with a classy little hymn book? -- but

I'm hearing a lot of different ghosts in these songs, namely some Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens, Rock Plaza Central, Deer Tick, John Darnielle / Mountain Goats; they're all in there, serving as signposts but never getting in the way of the message.

Which is ... I don't know, actually (though being unwillingly/unwittingly colonized seems to have a stake in the story, as a quote about the creation of a European Empire, taken from Cecil Rhodes' original will, opens the first page of the sleeve art).

With so many records to review it's nearly impossible to figure out the gist of every Concept Album (if that is its real name) or otherwise. That said, the music flaunts enough wrinkles to keep you interested long enough to figure it all out.

You get ringing pianos, banjo, violins both creaky and smooth, yelped vocals often doubled up, a shit-load of trumpet -- that's where a lot of the NMH creeps in -- and drums that expertly lead the whole shebang to the edge of a cliff, only to veer back to flat land just in time.

Most of all, Hymns From Rhodesia is cinematic and direly Serious; intense; urgent. It's the sort of music that starts leaking onto playlists as fall slowly swallows summer with its giant, autumn-leaf-spitting maw.

And with that, I truly know my summer is over, and so I leave you with my favorite vocal line, accompanied by a stoic photo of a man carrying jasper back to his town:

"Pilgrim in that golden city,
Seated in the jasper throne,
Zion's king, arrayed in beauty,
Reigns in peace from zone to zone;
There, on verdant hills and mountains,
Where the golden sunbeams play,
Purling streams, and crystal fountains,
Sparkle in th' eternal day."

Holy lord ...