Pitchfork

I'm still searching for the best way to drop the phrase "spoken-word" without sending potential readers running, because this collaborative mini-album between photographer-cum-poet Gerry Mitchell and the band Little Sparta dodges any stigma the tag might carry. For one, Little Sparta-- who craft a quaint rustic-yet-dark feel from acoustic guitar, violin, harmonium, drums, and enough minor-key preciousness to soundtrack a stop-motion Tim Burton feature-- would have no trouble carrying a record by themselves. In some instances here they hint at what a Little Sparta record would sound like: Mitchell's muttered, cryptic rhymes and can barely be heard above the opener "Scalpel Slice", and he's not present on two instrumentals, "Ruins" or "I See Life", where the band digs deepest into its capabilities for melody and atmosphere.

But yes, this can't be called speak-singing, just talk-talking; Mitchell is reciting full-blown poetry over Little Sparta's instrumentals. It would make for an odd reading unaccompanied, though. Listen to "Mocking Mirror", where his genial, welcoming voice turns into a convulsion as he barely spits out the words the word "moon," then starts over from the beginning, like a fireside chat from an infirmed uncle or a beguiling old stranger in a hostel or a café. It's a strange touch that would only work on an album, creating the feeling of narration without any real narrative, just a few repeated lines in a thick Scottish accent and thicker tones of regret.

Things start to shift with "Skyscraper Housebound". The band plays more repetitive figures, and Mitchell's placement of the words becomes conscious of the music, waiting his turn for the harmonium to finish its brief interjection before chiming in. It feels like an informal gathering of quick learners, trading off one another and slowly giving each other the proper space. On "Carefully Constructed Ruin", the band steps back into almost total ambience, a terse, wheezing drone behind Mitchell's most emotional moment on the record.

The track with the greatest symbiosis is also the strangest. "Even the Saints" has Mitchell shouting just one syllable with every slow, staccato downbeat: he shouts, Eve!...En!...The!...Saints!...Don't!...Like!...It!... Here...!" (you get the idea) until, finally, he ends the track by restating, in the flattest tone possible, "No, really; It seems to be seems broken, or at least all fucked up, and I'm embarrassed by my efforts to survive here." That last line may deflate the track's tension, but it also underlines the bittersweet and unpretentious territory they explore.

Even if they're only truly together on the final track, these collaborators feed off of each other in strange ways, with an edge that keeps this from just poetry set to music. Neither Mitchell nor Little Sparta wants the limelight, and the record is better for it.

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