Their debut is like a mood board, a spate (eleven tracks over thirty-seven minutes) of snaps, grabs and aspirations.
Barely-there vocalist couples with an electronic instrumentalist who is absolutely all over the place. They are Alicia Merz from New Zealand, who as Birds of Passage has been garnering increased attention since her recording debut two years ago, and Englishman Gareth Munday (Roof Light), whose talent is colossal and straddles a broad range of genres. Together they are Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a name borrowed from Franco Zeffirelli´s film on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.
And they are as different as night and day, which is problematic. Each track sung by Merz has a character very distinct from the restless instrumentals executed by Munday. Their debut is like a mood board, a spate (eleven tracks over thirty-seven minutes) of snaps, grabs and aspirations. Munday provides Merz with spectacular settings—looping acoustic guitar and violin on “Ghosts of Barry Mill,” warm, cradling bass on “Cope,” spacious shoegaze in the spirit of Flying Saucer Attack and its cohort on “South Downs by Morning.” Small strokes of craftsman genius, like the mere wisp of melodica on the lullaby “A Year´s Worth of Leaves in Your Heart,” are utterly profound.
On his solo instrumental outings, however, he is in an entirely different solar system. There are moments that blend with the vocal tracks, like the vinyl romanance of “One Throws and One Pulls,” but they are brief and few. The spastic Latin samba of the title track and midday baby nightmare collage “From Grain to Flour” are terrific. But the overall impression is so schizophrenic, it makes it hard to believe these tracks were all intended to be heard on the same album.
The compact disc version closes with a haunting remix by Listening Mirror, a still fog suspended over a huge, inland sea, viewed from a great distance.
Brother Sun, Sister Moon is available on Denovali. Buy at iTunes.
