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CMJ New Music Report Exclusive Review
Cranes' third album, Loved, finds the band at a musical crossroadsroads: behind it the somber, gothic lands from which it first emerged, ahead, in the distance, a terrain of artful sensibility, and to either side the uncharted fringes of mood and atmosphere that join the two. The sound that defined Cranes' first two albums is stretched and re-worked with greater textural variance and melody, Alison Shaw's harrowing baby-song entering warmer folds of expression and character. The shadowy piano loops and squalling planes of guitar that evoked much of these records' dark beauty are all but abandoned here, replaced with the simple melodic colors provided by xylophone, oboe and violin. Stripped to the barest drum and acoustic guitar bedding, Loved's songs are stark, chilling landscapes haunted by Shaw's affecting exhalations. Fill these vast worlds with the band's orchestral surges and her voice becomes an intimate expression of sadness, a ghostly and forlorn dichotomy of tortured emotion and childlike naivete. "Paris And Rome" and "Shining Road" travel from small, cherubic voices through huge, swelling builds tempered with a dark underbelly; "Are You Gone?" remains in Shaw's childhood attic, while "Pale Blue Sky" and "Come This Far" are as thoughtful as they are frightening.
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