Tuesday, November 23, 2010

His Name Is Alive - The Dirt Eaters

HNIA were far and away my least favourite 4AD band in the early 1990s, so to say I was pleasantly surprised by their 1992 EP The Dirt Eaters would be a bit of an understatement. Blown away, more like.

The title track's gentle, rolling folk (with incongruously creeply lyrics) is the EP's highlight, but there's also the similarly-styled "We Hold the Land in Great Esteem", a haunting cover of Rainbow's ""Man on the Silver Mountain", and the cacophonous but addictive "Tigers". Only "Are We Still Married?" falls flat, although frankly, it sounds like it was intended to.

It is really an astonishing release, and I can't understand why Warren Defever didn't do more of this sort of thing.

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