erasing clouds
 

Flare Acoustic Arts League, Cut

review by dave heaton

Cut begins with LD Beghtol singing as elegantly as ever, words as witty and provactive as always, on a song titled, “Reminiscences of a Minnesota State Training School Alumnus, Class of 1905”. After a little marching-band jaunt, our titular alumn tells of how he spent his whole life “doing people good…doing exactly what [he] should”, and he learned his lesson. So now he’s making headlines, for the trail of corpses he leaves behind, Sweeney Todd-style perhaps. “See I never discriminate / I practice 100% unconditional hate”, he sings, drawing each word out for maximum effect.

Words matter here. They’re not strung together willy-nilly, they’re carefully chosen, and carry with them ideas and feelings galore. But they’re also set in a rather lovely, I imagine people will say “orchestral”, pop context. The band name Flare Acoustic Arts League (as opposed to simply Flare, as it was in the past) no doubt refers to how many guest musicians and singers accompany Beghtol throughout. That leads to some great group sing-along moments throughout.

Spread out across the CD are some especially playful shorter songs that work as interludes, like the pirate-y or pub-y (or Kurt Weill-y, perhaps) “Ballad of Little Brown Bear” and the a cappella choral number “(Pull My) Daisy Chain”. Those form a balance of a kind with the more seriously dramatic numbers, like “Luminary” (which has a great processed-guitar, or something, quavering through the start) and “Simeon/A Dream of Love”. Rather than weigh the album down, though, these explore seriously atmospheric, even Gothic, moods in a very rewarding way. There are rather heavy themes of life and death, love and loss, etc. in these songs that I look forward to navigating more deeply, understanding more upon future listens. But musically the songs have a lot of pleasure to offer even on the first listens. “Luminary”, for example, rises and falls in comforting and unsettling ways, with all sorts of interesting sounds within. Cut as a whole could fit that same description, actually.

Though not the actual last track, “Love Finds Andy Warhol” feels like a resolution to the album. It’s Cut’s big anthemic number, with a snazzy, melancholy and sweet melody and various singers taking turns, especially at the end (including the instantly recognizable Stephin Merritt). The song uses Andy Warhol Factory personalities as embodiments of us all, framing life (and celebrity-dom) as a pursuit of love, without the end result necessarily being good: “love finds Andy Warhol / but it’s not a pretty picture”. It’s a complicated song – very catchy, slightly funny, sad, and hopeful but not really. A complicated album too, in all of the best ways.

{www.affairsoftheheart.de}


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