Libertine

Album Review

More jagged and range roaming than In the West (and somehow slightly more direct), Libertine fully realizes a struggle between Silkworm's three fine songwriters. Aside from that, it's not a great deal different from its predecessor, released earlier that year. And it's just as good, if a bit lengthy. Andy Cohen checks in with the first two songs and is basically unheard of for the remainder, while Joel Phelps and Tim Midgett deliver three-song chunks at different stretches. Cohen provides another history song on "There Is a Party in Warsaw Tonight," with image-heavy lines like "There will be peace on mounds of teeth" and "The men are revolted, but they'll have to learn to keep their duty before their guts." Midgett really steps out on his own through "Cotton Girl" and especially the sharp "Couldn't You Wait," honing his ability of summing up romantic stumbling blocks and picking apart wrongdoers. Phelps' "Oh How We Laughed" is a wrenching breakup song, fractured and fraught as much as anything the Wedding Present recorded. Vocally it's one of the man's best, with an especially vicious last minute. It was probably around here that people started using the sadcore and/or slowcore adjectives to describe the band. It's a completely unfitting term, as one listen to the rousing "Wild in My Day" or the dissonant "Cotton Girl" can attest. The use of loud guitars is too central. Though turtle-paced and introspective at times, Silkworm are rarely sad. And when peeling back instrumentation, they're not fragile. They're just a different kind of rock band — raw with no gimmicks and striking without over-indulgence.