Morose, elegiac, yet bursting with a sense of fragile hope, Ashtray Electric’s Measured in Falls (Super Familias) is an album to cherish.
The overall sound, with its sudden bursts of tempo change, caressing piano lines and liquid, fluid drumming, will remind you of early the Cure. In fact, the Cure’s progression, from the scatty exuberance of Three Imaginary Boys to the mordant self-examination of Seventeen Seconds, is mirrored by Ashtray Electric’s trajectory.
Their first offering, the EP The Dave Sessions, was playful and bouncy, whereas Measured in Falls is introspective and layered.
It is not quite a two-CD progression, though. Bonjour, the band’s first full-length album, had plenty on it to predict where the group was going. If this goes true to a truncated form, we can expect a third album of poppy experimentation next.
Many of the songs begin, or have verses that begin, with an audible inhalation, as if singer Andre Gideon Montgomery Pienaar is about to blow dandelion seed into the air. It is an announcing trick familiar to jazz singers and one that imbues the songs with a touching gravitas.
For a 24-year-old, Pienaar has a fine grasp of the difference between angst and whininess. Not many young male singers understand that delicate balance between thinking that your pain is intensely personal while simultaneously recognising that its very banality is what gives it existential heft.
Guitarist Rudi Cronje is fantastically restrained, allowing the rhythm section of Rupert and Regardt Nel to drive the fluctuating emotion and melody as much as his guitar underpins and frames it.
This is a band that does its listeners the courtesy of assuming they are intelligent. As Cronje has said in an interview: “It’s an album, not a collection of singles. We wanted to write an album that took you on a bit of a journey, for people who still listen to albums.”
Of course, that is the usual South African rub: Is there an audience for albums in the free-MP3 universe?
It is to the band’s credit that this question hasn’t really occurred to them. According to Cronje, who seems a little perplexed by the question: “It’s not for a market, or an intention. It’s honest. There’s no worth in putting something out unless it’s honest. We just wanted to bring out an album, man. That’s it.”
The cynics among us will scoff at this, seeing it as a marketing ploy veering between obdurate and accidental. But when you listen to an album like Measured in Falls, you’re convinced of the honest artistic urge behind it.
This is not to say that it is flawless.
There are times when Ashtray Electric stray into the overwrought territory best occupied by Foto na Dans and there is something relentless about Pienaar’s introspection. Come on dude, you’re a rock star! You must get laid occasionally. Lighten up.
On Blood, Pienaar sings: “I don’t need to dance/ I’ve got music in my blood/ I’ll lose you to this music/ I’ll lose me to myself.”
It’s not quite true.
Without the dance, the blood doesn’t flow as quickly as it might. Or to put it less allegorically: an album of beauty would have been made better only if there was a bit more lustiness, a little more lewdness.
It’s a minor quibble, though. You’ll still get lost in Measured in Falls — and delightfully so.