Album: The Bread and the Bait
Label: Antenna Farm
Rating: 3.5/5
A highly deceiving album, Foxtails Brigade’s The Bread and the Bait revels in its trickery. This is an LP that commences in a very simplistic way but quickly becomes a highly diverse piece of transcendent beauty. Through the use of guitar, cello, and violin, Foxtails Brigade creates a sense of feeling regarding time and place. During most of their eleven-track debut album, the listener is transported to an era once lived.
At times, the soft, melodic tone of singer Lauren Weinbach’s majestic voice summons the innocence of a mother singing her child to sleep. While at other moments the tranquil pitch of harmonic beauty is interrupted by accelerated guitar finger plucks that insinuate nightmarish visions of increasing horror.
This is greatly emphasized on the songs “Pan-Asian Delight” and “Steak and Cookies”. Two truly bi-polar melodies where peaceful and innocent lyricism is interspersed with dark and foreboding imagery.
Though, at times, some songs (“Creeping Ophelia” and “The Hours”) inch towards the mundane and the simply boring, it never once takes the time to admire these characteristics. There is a vivacious spirit present here, and the album refuses to remain bound by simple genre limitations. Musically, it bounces around (in a good way) with the energetic exuberance brought about by inspiration, and through this motivation dares to delve into numerous themes ranging from gentle sombreness (“The Clown”) to nostalgic remorse (“Long Day”). In essence, each track benefits as a result of its unpredictable nature.
Though not for all tastes, The Bread and the Bait offers something new and exciting to the listener privileged enough to hear it.
