Mordecai Seeds From the Furthest Vine LP
The coarse and creative lo-fi of the Montana-born MORDECAI reemerges for a sixth full-length outing. While the loose abstraction of the cover art on Seeds From the Furthest Vine broadly fits the band’s approach, its stark minimalism is in striking contrast to the music it foretells. Nearly a decade and a half from their inception, the brothers Holt and Elijah Bodish and friend Gavin Swietnicki (in various configurations) are still tending to a fertile garden as they continue to stretch and warp their definition, and these ten tracks present a sprawling landscape of diverse textures. Loaded with artful acoustics, elements of organ, and various types of improvised percussion, they occupy a strange space with their primitive, off-kilter indie sound, sometimes devolving into what comes across more like “sound sculptures” than songs. A rickety roller coaster ensues, from the crude jubilation of the opening “Empty Visions,” to the driving dream pop of “When You Know Them As,” to the sparse and scribbled “Meat on a Stick,” and eventually the shamanic title track, which is decoratively draped across the end of Side A and the start of Side B. “Divine Sea” finds Holt sounding like Lou Reed rambling in his sleep, just before the hopeless nihilism in the folk horror of “Never Get Ahead” kicks in. Ultimately, the two final songs invoke a feeling of the last few minutes before a carnival closes (“Transverse”), and then a feverish accordion serenades some violence behind the closed curtains (“Down in an Alley”). Gorgeous, absurd, and haunting, this stuff really sticks to the psyche.