Let's just get to it. Highs and Lows is melodic, violent, pastoral, yearning, confident, reticent, impossibly sad, squeamish, bitter, frank, howling, optimistic, humorous, and implausibly contradictory. In other words, another great album by The Black Watch.
Let's start with the second track on the album: "Quondam Redhead." When you successfully can follow a graphic head wound description with "Doot doot doot doot doot doot doo," you can pretty much do anything. It's the second song of the album, and the final 3:15 of the song (which clocks in at just over 6 minutes) is basically feedback.
Now if there is one rule for epic feedback, it's this: it ends the album. Period. It DOES NOT work on the second track on the album. It just doesn't. But somehow it does here.
The Black Watch -- "Pershing/Harvard Square"
There are plenty of other excellent songs to be had here: "She's a Mess," "Pershing/Harvard Square," "There's No F*$%ing Way" (my SFW spelling, sorry), "Love's Fever Dreams," "Elanor's Not Hiding"... it's a great variety of tempos, textures, and feel from song to song. It all hangs together somehow.
Do I have an issue with this album? Yes. It's track order. I listened to the promo version for quite awhile... at some point I switched to the physical CD. The CD version has "Pershing/Harvard Square" as track 3, flopped with "She's a Mess." That actually works better. But it's a quibble, not a criticism.
CD Placement Rating: Car iPod. Go find this one.
- Snilch
