The Ichthyologist picks
up exactly where Metridium Field leaves
off, with a slower, hypnotic track in “Panthalassa”. And what a way to start
their second full length. An album that holds a special place in my heart,
although a different one from the spot occupied by Metridium Field, The
Ichthyologist has a dense and unsettling atmosphere about it that can, at
certain times, be downright suffocating.
Released in early 2009, The
Ichthyologist is a concept album that would mark the beginning of a loosely
collected story that would span the last three Giant Squid releases about a man
lost at sea, struggling to survive. It would also mark the beginning of the
songs being subtitled with scientific names for various marine life. The opening
pair of “Panthalassa” and “La Brea Tar Pits” lurch along, setting a tone that
is at once both soothing and unsettling before “Sutterville” comes along as a
general tonal balm. Yet there is something is the more ethereal and clam “Sutterville”
that always seems out of tune, like there’s always a note that is just off,
ever so slightly enough that no actual calm can be established. It’s the sound
of something always being wrong, despite outward appearances being fine. “Dead
Man’s Slough” continues the sonic lull, and is perhaps the actual calming
track. This merely sets the table for the frantic rerecording of “Throwing A
Donner Party At Sea” from the Monster in
the Creek EP, here with the added vocals of Karyn Crisis who, despite not
having a lot of familiarity with, is instantly recognizable. She helps to give
the song, already a stomping affair, a real sense of urgency and menace.
The albums’ second half begins with the haunting beginning
and furious ending of “Sevengill,” a track that may be in a nutshell be a
showcase of everything this band does. Featuring some lush guest vocals by Anneke
van Giersbergen, I think still of The Gathering at that time, “Sevengill”
combines the narrative power of the band with the slow build and the sludgy
roughness and the unsettling atmosphere that makes the band such a tense joy to
experience.
“Mormon Island” and “Emerald Bay” are both almost seven minute long exercises
in creepily relaxed tension. Tension in the sense that you know something is
wrong, an eerie clam that belies some real problem or danger or something,
lurking. Some may say, ‘lurking beneath the waves,’ and that would be
appropriate. The band does not simply employ a nautical or marine theme, but
captures the atmosphere of the quite moments on the water of movies like Jaws or, well honestly, I can’t think of
any other good shark movies. To say Jaws is
a huge influence on the band is to make a laughable understatement, as said
film has seeped into everything the band has done since its inaugural EP. A
Giant Squid album is a montage of those scenes where someone is swimming in a
clear and serene ocean, only seconds later to be ambushed by a shark that
viciously destroys them, before the water returns to its calm appearance. As an
observer, or audience to something like Jaws,
you know that the calm surface hides something terrible, yet not malevolent,
but something violent and ferocious nonetheless. You know that what that swimmer
is mistaking for calm serenity is simply waiting to erupt, without knowing when
it will happen. Tracks like “Panthalassa” and “the beginning half of “Sevengill”
are those calm moments that hide a beast: you, as audience, know that this
alleged calm is soon to burst into frenzy, yet are confined to merely float
along until it happens, knowing that once it does, there will have been nothing
that you could have done to avoid or preempt it.
When I first heard The
Ichthyologist, I was dealing with some pretty bleak personal times, having
been unemployed for a little while was really starting to eat away at my mind.
While my associations with Metridium
Fields are universally positive, the same cannot be said of this album,
unfortunately. That uneasy quality, something that I love so much about this
band, and from music in general honestly, brings me back to a time when
everything was unease, and this album was the soundtrack to a lot of late, late
nights of disquiet and unease as I sat frantically around my apartment, mind
racing to sort an incredibly limited number of options. The creeping dread of
life at that time married perfectly to the creeping unease of Giant Squid,
making a near perfect soundtrack for those dead-of-winter nights with nothing
to do, either at the moment or the next day, and the general sense of there
being nothing that I could do, either at the moment or the next day. Fitting
maybe that my relistening to The
Ichthyologist came along at the end of the semester, where feelings of
relief at being finished with nonstop work for a few weeks butt heads with
feelings of creeping dread, and a sense that nothing can be done.
But music is supposed to stir the emotions, like all good art. Giant Squid again crafted
a completely beautiful and emotionally draining soundscape with this album, one
that is alternatingly beautiful and completely terrifying, for reasons of the
music, not limited to the connections made with it on a personal level. No,
this one runs real deep, and it is the potentially unfathomable depths of it
that inspire curiosity and admiration, as well as instill untold terror.
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