OXBOW
Love’s Holiday
Ipecac
OXBOW’s decades-long live reputation of power, volume, confrontation, and, in particular, frontman and singer Eugene Robinson’s high IQ-enthused, if unsettling personae, I cannot attest to. I’ve not seen them perform other than via YouTube. Close as that documentation may be to how I should experience their music, I only know their recordings, which could be deemed challenging. It was Robinson’s words in the press release (not those of an Ipecac rep), that prompted closer examination of their latest studio recording, Love’s Holiday: (this record is) “an evolution in OXBOW’s journey to make the most perfect paean to love ever… a record that loves you but then explains that there’s no benefit to being loved by us.”
OXBOW are smart folks. Love’s Holiday is a smart record.
So what does this mean to a listener? Robinson’s lyrics aren’t so oblique as imagistic. Think “The Red Wheelbarrow,” if the glazing rainwater was rusty. But unlike “Love Holiday” by Earth, Wind & Fire, with its cozy paean to love’s hypnotic connotations, the elements at play in OXBOW are magnified or miniaturized but ever tumultuous. Across the album, nuance abounds with choices to include a chorale and certain pop arrangements, among other creative steps. Purposeful allusions to light/dark and sea/sky juxtapose with not-so-comfortable nights in not-so-comfortable rooms.
Consider “Million Dollar Weekend” and Robinson’s declaration:
“And there was blue in the wintry sky/That frosted quick outside our window/ While we were rolling in our suicide/Through the heat, the light and the dark show.”
Mother Nature’s surprises and the great divides between and within human hearts evoke William Blake more than David Yow. Maybe. The song is mostly somber. OXBOW’s explorations with orchestral abetment alongside minor chord arpeggios and sizzlingly short guitar fills complement the forlorn, crooning Robinson. This is familiar music. The sentiments are Robinson’s, personal but nonetheless for the public to incorporate. Before this album, Robinson’s lyrics provided a template for the music. This go ‘round, guitarist Niko Wenner wrote music first. From hummed melodies to transcription, Wenner’s music factored the birth of children and loss of a parent.
Robinson unpredictably elongates phrases — a submerged meter — with a soulful drawl on “Lovely Murk” to form a buried blues with Kristin Hayter’s higher register counterpoint. It’s carnal and unhurried. Exhibit B after preceding lyrical elliptical ruminations on “doing it” reads…
“That love is like hunger when you’re dying of thirst/ And the end will always most assuredly come first.”
“Icy White & Crystalline” is another beast, though. Robinson and the band here let it rip. Sounds like OXBOW, feels like OXBOW. A fighter fronting musicians who love all that jazz and collapsing overpasses. When the rubble sets, they commence to rebuild. Separating couplets across verses from “how hearts burn” to “how heat turns” to a refrain of “whatever dances on the head of a pin” propose the ethereal and corporeal as inseparable and fundamental to some kinds of love.
Love’s Holiday auspiciously advances cinematic and muscular music.
Love’s Holiday, OXBOW’s Ipecac Recordings’ debut, is out on July 21. Pre-order here.
