REVIEW: Hugo Largo, Drum (All Saints/Thirsty Ear)
- Chelsea Spear
Hugo Largo's entrancingly beautiful music was an anomaly on the scene it grew out of. Unlike the harsh No-Wave orchestrations that bassist Tim Sommer was helping to sculpt with avant-garde musician Glenn Branca, the music of Hugo Largo was ethereal, melodic and deceptively strong. Their lineup (two basses, a violin, and an occasional piano, held together with the spooky, operatically influenced vocal stylings of Mimi Goese) was highly unusual. Though their sound was rooted in traditions both experimental (the Raincoats' Odyshape album and the swooping, intoxicating vocal tics of Mary Margaret O'Hara) and traditional for rock music (the lush sound associated with Britain's 4AD label).
A decade after the Largos disbanded, the rock world has gone through a similar cycle of growth, though obviously on a greater commercial level than the dark, discordant avant-punk scene of the Lower East Side; logy grunge has given way to ringing pop and Lilith sweetness. Though detecting the influence that Hugo Largo's two albums have had in that time is difficult compared to, say, finding the influence of Sonic Youth or Big Black, Drum and Mettle still have some relevant things to say to musicians and audiences alike in this day and age. In light of this, Thirsty Ear Records has reissued the band's spare, achingly beautiful debut album, Drum, after it languished out of print for what seems like forever.
The beauty and majesty of Drum has, thankfully, not aged in that time. Producer Michael Stipe applied a spare hand to the band's production, allowing the breathtaking beauty of their music to emerge on its own, and on their own terms. Given the band's pedigree, and given the unusual musical lineup, it occasionally comes as a surprise that their music is so traditionally and lushly melodic. However, the most satisfying moments come out of the band's interest in messing around with conventional song structures (such as on the atmospheric, cinematic tones of Country). More often than not, the most satisfying musical moments come from the band's interest in creating a mood for the audience to slip into, such as on "Second Skin," which blends a crunching dynamic with an intoxicating, slippery melody.
This reissue of Drum eschews the brief song lineup of its original vinyl release with the bonus track-happy lineup that was reissued on John Cage's short-lived Warner Brothers imprint. While the tunes are good, they restate themes that were demonstrated on the album with much more grace and clarity. "Scream Tall" is an a cappella scat number that manages to make Goese sound shrecky instead of her usual graceful, and "Harper's" is a strange number that manages to go through every time signature in the book without finding one it likes. Indeed, this reissue is disappointing for several reasons: it eschews making available some of the harder-to-find HL stuff, like their Christmas single and other B-sides and demos, the strange contrast of the print on the liner looks like a shoddy color photocopy and the sublime "My Favourite People" is spaced from the regular action of the album with a ten-second delay that suggests a bonus track. In light of how wonderful this music is, and how unavailable it has been for the past decade, however, I'm thankful that someone had the foresight to reissue it. Bravo to Thirsty Ear, and we'll take a look at their reissue of Mettle in the near future.
