3 out of 5

Label: VHF

Producer: Vincent Van Go-Gogh

It is so, so easy to get misled by the swirlingly creepy goodness of opening track Viennese II.  Dorothy Geller’s defined, patterned yet wandering plucking so atonally paired with James Wolf’s purposefully screechy violin, while ‘Vincent’ from Rake adds flavor with feedback and scrapes and percussion clattering, building to the most delicious melange of noise near the song’s five minute peak.  When Geller brings her talk/whispered proems in for ‘Stereowire,’ it works because of a push and pull – her guitar a steady baseline against her frail voice and odd words, a few lines spoken before we let the music carry us for a few minutes, then back ’round again.  This is some of the more minimalistic stuff on VHF, but it works on you in an indirect fashion that, oddly, makes it more listenable than something that can be called more directly psych or improv or noise (for fans of those genres).  But the balance starts to slip with the title track, where lyrics and guitar are forefront, the rumbling of noise and squelch of strings way in the background.  These elements juxtaposed against Geller’s voice works; making her the focus trades the delightful unease of the sound for something almost… precious.  Thankfully its still pretty sparse, and the songs that choose this format – also track 6, ‘Coin’ – are the album’s shortest, three minutes in length.  But it’s tough to say how much these moments end up affecting the overall experience.  I do think that since the album in general is rather sparse, any moment that betrays this can do quite a bit of harm.  Indeed, recovering from ‘Caught in Unknowing’ takes the 12-minute ‘Victims and Second Viennese,’ which only really wipes the slate clean in its latter portion, another musical whirlwind of discordance before the most bare of chill outs ever… a heartbeat kickdrum, only slightly audible, one note plucked at random here and there…  This would’ve been an ideal ender.  Before that, we get ‘Mute Mouth,’ which concludes in a pretty badass squall of staccato notes and dramatic strings.  Closer ‘Stale Mate’ effectively echoes the balance of ‘Stereowire,’ but its lead-in is the humdrum aforementioned ‘Coin,’ so unfortunately we tune out a bit (or, eh, I do) before the album’s purposeful close.

Geller and Wolf apparently do their thing in a separate band.  I can’t speak to the similarities or differences, but I think that, regardless, the best moments of ‘Caught’ are when all three artists find a groove together.  Though Vincent’s hand is all over the amazingly rich and cavernous sound of the recording, the flavor of all his extra elements are sorely missed when they’re absent.