Bohren & der Club of Gore are striking. The first time I ever heard the lonely-street-at-night style of Dolores I was starting up a meal in my slow cooker. My wife had encouraged me to cook more, so here I was, three days into my marathon meal week. I set up Bohren on the counter behind me and as soon as the first movement graced the room, everything looked different. This was not just food anymore. This was an agricultural act, rife with the lives of many creatures, hours of human labor, years of patience to get these ingredients to me. So much went into the conjuring of the story of this meal. I was merely finishing it. Bohren do that. Sounding like no one else, they watch you from over your shoulder, commenting on even the most underappreciated pieces of our lives.
At first I thought that the songs could be re-arranged in any order, and it would be just as interesting. This can be true, but Bohren & der Club of Gore did pace Dolores as perfectly as I can estimate. The first two tracks offer a yin and a yang of moods. Opener "Staub" sets a tectonic pace with the band from Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany's signature, calculated cymbal crashes, and then "Karin" sounds like a sultry she-Tortoise warming herself with a hot cocoa and a cigarette on a snow day. Not until twenty minutes into the album does "Unkerich" introduce to us a most welcome black-feathered saxophone. The sax's appearance is compellingly comforting despite its melancholic key and somber dance. In the background you can hear the sound of a fallen leaf being dragged by the hanging plume of a ghost's gown on the hardwood floor. One can imagine the dark saxophone undulating like a sad octopus in the air as it leads a dance with this phosphorescent apparition. A lovely scene during one of Bohren's strongest tracks.
Every song on Dolores is poignant. When it's playing on the turntable, every molecule in the room is significant. People call some bands "ahead of their time," but Bohren sound like they are playing to an audience in a romantic past. Each patient step in a song seems instinctually arrived at, sizzling with the cold fire of history. They sound like they've seen it all and won't be surprised by what comes next. There is no rush. Story tellers of somewhere else, they guard those seldom-visited places in our minds where fear keeps us out, playing along as we reluctantly move through a dark corridor toward a revelation.
And that's its secret: it's not doomy. This music is merely wearing black. It's bright in feeling. The vibraphone and the Fender Rhodes ensure it. Sure, "Still am Sresen" sounds much like the lonely lament a detective feels when he hangs his hat in his office after a bad night, perhaps when his partner was killed during a shooting, but the whiskey he pours to kill the pain is going to lead him to catharsis. These are stories of hope through the gloom. They beg the tragic listener to reflect, "Despite it all, I am still alive, and that's a chance to be happy again." Instead of going on tour, I imagine Bohren playing in a liminal realm, coloring many a bizarrely unfortunate scene, imbuing people with a new, secret perspective.
Consider this possible venue for Bohren:Vladimir Nabokov once read about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, composed the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: the sketch depicted the bars of the animal's own cage. What a sad, but curious story! The Universe winked when this happened, channelled the epic album closer "Welton" from Dolores as Nabokov played witness to a tragic but all-encompassing truth to the world, and he ended up using this story as "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita, his most famous novel. Interesting, also, is that 'Lolita' is the Spanish nickname of the more formal name 'Dolores', which means "sorrowful".
As someone who has never heard any of the other Bohren & der Club of Gore albums, their music came as a surprise to me. With a name like that, I expected a much harder edge to their sound and a slightly thespian approach. Without their extensive back catalogue to compare to (they've been a band since the early 90's), I am blown away by the patience and the stolid charisma of this well-established and well-loved group.Dolores is not a Twin Peaks soundtrack, an idea some people might ask you to entertain. This album is better suited as a revolving soundtrack to a silent film from the 1920's, like Abel Gance's 5 hour epic Napoléon.Dolores is loud by being quiet. Once it starts playing, you can't not listen to it. It's existence seems only natural, and at the same time it is asking you personal questions in a smoke-filled room. Do yourself a favor and get this album into your life. Share it with your friends, so that they may share it with themselves.
-Nayt Keane