I’ve lived with Castle Talk for about a month now and, listened to in tandem with Noun’s Holy Hell also featuring vocalist, guitarist Marissa Patermoster, it makes for a wide ranging double of Marissa’s unconscionably great songwriting.
The urge is to call the Noun/Screaming Females a soft/hard axis, but it is more like a solo vs group experience. Marissa is more exposed in HH. Castle Talk hits harder, Noun goes deeper.The lead off singles from both albums, “Holy Hell” and “I Don’t Mind It” are as hard and melodic as anything on SF’s third album Power Move but otherwise Marissa is past those early days and onto Phase 3: waiting for mainstream success.
When I interviewed drummer Jarrett Dougherty last year, he metioned Arctic Monkey’s had afford the band the opening slot on their US tour last year and they had turned him down so when I say the mainstreaming I mean the relentless and self-evident move from cult to larger audience.
If Castle Talk was a double (if it included the Noun songs) it would be a huge album, a major statement from a woman whose time had come. Instead it feels like a holding action after the emotional pummelling of Holy Hell. Nothing cuts as deep as “So Rough” or “Call earth” and while you’d have to be death to find a thing to complain about on an album with songs as good as “Sheep”and “Boss” -the latter, a particularly lovely song where the guitar seems to poke out from the song in whinge notes before riffing to heaven, still I can’t help but wish for a little more.
Anyway, the full review, think I’m gonna ask somebody else to write it, is yet to come so we will see.