Permenant Record: That’s Your Fire
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Quite simply Aloha’s “That’s Your Fire” is responsible for me being able to appreciate subtlety in musicianship vs. the brash bombastic sounds and heart on your sleeve emotion that had dominated my listening habits up and ‘til this record. The first time I ever heard Aloha was at a show at Allegheny College’s student run coffeehouse, Grounds for Change. A friend of mine had booked the show and got me there with the promise that if nothing else I would enjoy the fact that they had a vibraphone. I was skeptical, and it seemed like nothing more than gimmicky attempt to differentiate themselves from their Polyvinyl piers – my skepticism could not have been more undeserved.
That’s Your Fire has an underlying ethereal quality that reminds me of the moments right before a summer storm – endlessly calm but ever- threatening deluge. The album is so sonically cohesive that singular songs do not stand out so much as the composition of the album as a whole. The band’s infusion of prog and jazz give the songs a meandering feeling that make this possible – that and the progressive songwriting the eschews the verse chorus verse format in favor of more linear structure that slowly reveals more details and nuances to the listener with every pass through the record.
Technically proficient/virtuosic musicians are always under the threat of making a pretentious and esoteric album (e.g. any and everything Steve Via has done). Aloha certainly has the skill for this to be a very real threat, but instead in the album reveals the band’s talent in their cunning use of sonic contrasts and dynamics. The interplay during “A Hundred Stories” is case in point of this concept. The drums, bass, guitar, vibraphone and vocals are able to move to and from the front and rear of the composition during the first portion of the song, peeling back to just vibes and vocals, and finally letting loose into a full-frontal aural assault, which gives way to the final 40 seconds of poly-rhythmic drumming and synth squelches. The song is as endlessly complex as it is enjoyable to listen to.
Some will argue that this record is relentless, others will say that it is a hazy mess. I would argue that this record goes to prove Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “All of life is an experiment. The more experiment you make, the better.”
MP3: Aloha – Liberty
MP3: Aloha – A Hundred Stories
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