4 out of 5

Label: Arts & Crafts

Producer: Timber Timbre

Sonically perfect, Timber Timbre suffers only from some samey-sounding songs and a similar template on several tracks.  Thankfully, it’s such a good blend that you don’t really care that much, and when the group does turn out 3/4ths of an album of amazingly fresh and creepy folky thomp, some repetition can be forgiven.

You can drop a reference like neo-folk Devandra Banheart or A&C labelmates Broken Social Scene and maybe get some of the vibe – darkness, shimmering, full of space but closeted by oddity and fear – but TT’s greyscale, drooping cover art catches it more accurately, as the trio string a slowly aggressive stomp behind stuttering keys and guitars and the madly reverbed vocals of Taylor Kirk talking about all sorts of late-night barn stories.  Music of this genre could easily slip into easy sadness or forced grandness, but Timber never take that path.  Their most emotive tracks – ‘Woman,’ ‘Do I Have Power’ – maintain a pleasant vagueness about them, dotted with the odd reference to a severed head (first line of opener ‘Bad Ritual,’ natch.).  It’s dark, moody voodoo folk but the group seems to come by it honestly.  And that reverb is such a perfect touch – Kirk’s vocals have a haunting pitch that wouldn’t carry much weight when spoken, but pulsed along with the keys and drums and then the echo turned up to 50, it matches the slinky mood.  I can’t get Paper Chase out of my head when listening to Timber – the group takes some of the key disparate elements of that band and slows and strips them down; John Congleton’s patient older brother who feeds the youngster the seeds for the wild ideas.

As mentioned, there is a habit of forming some of the tracks out of the same basic shape, but this only happens for the first half of the album before the group dives into shiveringly delightful happy/sad chord progressions for the remainder of the disc.  It’s always a good sign when you’re singing along with tracks after one listen.

Adding to the docking of one star, though, I must add that ‘Creep On Creepin’ On,’ despite being an amazingly catchy song with a great theme, drops the terms ‘dickless’ and ‘cock-block’.  Maybe I’m missing the context, but it doesn’t seem to gel with the rest of the album’s lyrics, and it takes me out of the listen every time I hear it.  Oh wompin’ well.