When
In the Nursery reached their 30th year as an active band, it wouldn't have been surprising if they took a retrospective turn. But while
Blind Sound is on the one hand clearly the work of Klive and Nigel Humberstone and nobody else, it's also one of their strongest and most surprising albums yet, and also one of their darkest and bleakest, perhaps not unsuitable, given the unsettled sociopolitical years of its creation and release. It's not that the duo and their regular accompanists have returned to the days of
Twins -- though the brothers and Dolores C. Marguerite add more vocals here than they have in a long while -- and there are calmer moments like the lovely "Coloured Silence," with harp and violin providing the lead. There's an aura of looming, glowering power throughout the disc, of a storm about to break or a hammer about to fall. The trademark, elegant string parts and deep brass sections sound all the more heightened in impact, high-toned sounds like distant screams of terror, while in another reworking of older elements, hints of sometimes nervous and sometimes snarling guitar and bass parts emerge in the mixes, like the growling bass punch on "Lectern." Even the forceful drumming familiar from so many of their releases sounds more ominous than ever on the title track, a rolling, crushing force that sends the song toward a conclusion with choral vocals, bass rumbles, and an uneasy, final, sustained string part. Songs like "Artisans of Civilization" with lyrics like "Too much faith in systems…Receive no help from without," though referring in part to the artistic drive in general, also give a sense of being lost without hope, matched further by song titles such as "Past Glory" and "Trial by Error."
Blind Sound ultimately feels like a classic mix of contradictory impulses: an adherence to the power of creativity and reinvention even as everything else feels like it's about to go horribly, terribly wrong. ~ Ned Raggett