The Rosebuds – Sand + Silence

The Rosebuds revive their disco sounds after the last few albums of folk, though decidedly darker, after the disco....
The Rosebuds : Sand + Silence
8.0 Western Vinyl
2014 

The Rosebuds : Sand + SilenceThe Rosebuds have always changed styles, album-to-album, but in recent years other changes have come as well, including the (legal) divorce of the husband-and-wife duo of Kelly Crisp (QRO interview) and Ivan Howard before 2011’s Loud Planes Fly Low (QRO review), and now the used-to-live-in-North Carolina act leaving North Carolina’s Merge Records for Western Vinyl with Sand + Silence. Yet the record is actually something of a throwback for the group, reviving their disco sounds after the last few albums of folk, though decidedly darker, after the disco.

After Loud Planes and the preceding Life Like (QRO review), Rosebuds fans could have expected more sad acoustic folk, but instead Sand + Silence rather eschews the outdoors or the quiet for the dancehall – after the dancing is done. “In My Teeth”, “Sand + Silence”, and “Esse Quam Videri” may all have disco-dance beats, but they’ve got the feel of regret, not reckless abandon. There is some straight-up happy tunes like “Blue Eyes”, and the record goes into older sounds near its end (it really didn’t need the fifties-like croon-sway of “Looking For”), but it is the dark discotheque that one primarily remembers.

The Rosebuds are old enough and skilled enough by this point to do any of a variety of sounds, but one has to admit to missing the flashier toe-tapping music of 2007’s Night of the Furies (QRO review) in recent years. Sand + Silence takes that sound and updates it for today’s darker world.

The Rosebuds – In My Teeth

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