And So I Watch You From Afar - Self Titled (5/5)

01. Set Guitars To Kill 05:29 02. A Little Bit Of Solidarity Goes A Long Way 03:25 03. Clench Fists, Grit Teeth…Go! 06:19 04. Capture Castles 07:17 05. Start A Band 04:53 06. Tip Of The Hat, Punch In The Face 04:21 07. If It Ain’t Broke…Break It 06:21 08. These Riots Are Just The Beginning 4:48 09. Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate 07:31 10. The Voiceless 6:27 11. Eat The City, Eat It Whole 07:35

Hey, you. Ever heard of a band from Northern Ireland called ‘And So I Watch You From Afar’? I suppose it might be unlikely, but they’ve been making something of a name for themselves with their early releases and various bombastic live performances. Kerrang! actually claimed that “they can do nothing wrong”, and a host of other publications from NME to Metal Hammer have lined up to sing their praises. Not bad, really, for a progressive instrumental outfit from Belfast…and frankly, all of the praise they’ve been attracting is entirely merited.

After recording two EPs, ’This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It’ and ’Tonight The City Burns’, their self-titled debut was released in April 2009 by Smalltown America Records, the independent label run by fellow Brit post-rock proggers Jetplane Landing. And yet, I’ve only just noticed it. My bad.

As progressive instrumental madness goes, this is surprisingly accessible stuff; I was instantly hooked right from the start, anyway. That’s probably because there’s a simple enough approach behind it - just guitars, bass, and drums. No orchestras or synth strings or flutes or any of your other weird prog staples. And So I Watch You From Afar create a more stripped-down sound, which manages at the same time to be utterly enormous - and at times devilishly complex. It’s also really quite heavy stuff, for the most part down-tuned and drenched in distortion. “Clench Fists, Grit Teeth…Go!”, for example, features a deliciously elephantine riff, and “Capture Castles” actually sounds a lot like something Cult of Luna would write. “Set Guitars To Kill”, indeed.

If you hadn’t noticed already, ASIWYFA (for a band with a long name, poorly suited to acronym) come up with some cracking song titles. It’s indicative of the sheer amount of ideas running through their music; you’d think that the fact it’s instrumental (the closest thing to singing is the occasional heartfelt “huh!” or “augh!” noise) would remove a degree of invention, through lyrics and songwriting, but these songs tell their own stories through the music. It’s tempting to think of them more as compositions than songs, in the Mozart kind of sense. And the titles often turn out to be very apt; an obvious example would be “If It Ain’t Broke…Break It”, which with its explosive riffs and drumming is one of the heaviest, most violent songs on the album. And then there’s my personal favourite, “Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate”, which is almost life-affirming as it builds to a joyous climax.

Frankly, there are more ideas crammed into this one album than many bands manage in their entire careers. Every song has a polyphony, two or three things going on at once, and at times you even take for granted just how difficult it is to hold that kind of performance together. They’re only a four-piece after all - so add “tighter than Meat Loaf in spandex” to that rapidly expanding list of plaudits. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Chris Wee, whose performance behind the drum kit is the nucleus holding the whole contraption together. He manages to keep his playing varied and interesting to listen to at the same time, adding yet another layer to the, um, cake. The musical layer cake. Cake is also delicious…good metaphor.

Thing is, as many different directions as the parts can wander in the space of a song, you’re almost guaranteed that at some point in there they’re going to band together and rip into a unified firestorm of riffage, one of those belting riffs that makes you break speed limits and lives in your head for days. The album is loaded down with such hooks, little licks and melodies that burrow into your brain and nag at you to listen to it again. That’s “catchy” and “excellent use of melody” added to the list, then, and you might as well throw in “faultless technical execution” as well while you‘re at it. I’m sure I mentioned something about that a minute ago.

Things draw to a close with “Eat The City, Eat It Whole”, which perhaps begins to tax the amount of times they can get away with repeating the ol’ quiet/loud dynamic, but when it ends …well, if you’re anything like me, you’re just going to start the album over again. I thought I had made up my mind about Album of the Year 2009 - Mastodon were always running away with it. So you can kind of deduce the kind of regard I hold this album in when I say that it forced me to reconsider. And from a British band, no less! Seriously, if you’re going to buy one album today, make it this one. It’s downright bloody excellent.

And So I Watch You From Afar is available to buy or download at Play.com

Genre : Progressive

Article by Phil Sim