The Dirty Clergy
In Waves
Cornelius Chapel
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The Dirty Clergy's In Waves is a wonderful set of muscularly ethereal songs. Sometimes the shoegaze-esque tunes feature spectral vocals that haunt straight-ahead rock tracks. Sometimes the songs present clear-as-day vocals over ghostly guitar strums. But often there's a mixture, the heavy and the airy within tunes used to seamlessly escort listeners through different worlds.
Other shoegaze bands have played with light and dark. Ireland's My Bloody Valentine is considered one of the originators of the genre, and their songs could often achieve fragility through density, almost as if their tracks were so sound-laden, one wrong cough could shatter everything. Alabama's The Dirty Clergy plays with familiar shoegaze sounds but uses a much more American lightness, the kind that comes out of garages and high school talent shows, to balance songs out.
"Born To Lose" comes at you, as the album title promises, in waves, singer/guitarist Brian Manasco's distant vocals barely peeking out over swaying guitars and drums, the sing-song melody and vocal harmonies trying to gather strength, only to eventually be smacked down by the music, like a child constantly getting knocked over by the surf. The song's intensity expands, shifting from timid to bold, but never losing its beauty, like lace made out of steel.
"Homesick" unfurls in a similar way, seemingly weak vocals gradually drawing power from the sheer loveliness of the song's melodies, with an ebb and flow like watching the ocean rolling in and out. The vocals are pretty but they're not delicate, a hard move to pull off.
But then The Dirty Clergy come at you with more traditionally rock & roll songs. One of them is their cover of Lana Del Rey's "West Coast," here reimagined with a Pink Floyd swagger, a Ted Nugent guitar tone, and a hook that borrows from Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen." There's a lot going on and it all works perfectly.
"Wonderland" has a ‘90s straightforwardness, with some familiar quiet/loud dynamics, a beat within a few neck twitches of headbanging, all of it mingling with muddy vocals. "Whiplash" is almost country, without much of the band's trademark haze but a vestigial jangle that perhaps lives in the listener and not the track. That song in particular, probably as stripped down as the band gets, is one of the album's sweetest moments, really providing a clear picture of Manasco's voice, which isn't technically exceptional, but is impressive in his ability to put across emotions.
Part of what makes this album so much fun is the way The Dirty Clergy are able to replicate the denseness of shoegaze and synth pop with conventional rock & roll instrumentation. Calling it a garage sound implies a certain kind of rawness and calling it lo-fi makes it sound like they're noisy. In reality, In Waves is polished and clean, but with a healthy dollop of alt-rock reverb and rock & roll chaos. The sound is ambitious and open, folding in the best of quite a few of my favorite genres, but perhaps In Waves biggest strength is the yin and the yang chasing each other in every song.
Notable Tracks: “Born To Lose” | “West Coast” | “Whiplash”
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