Tom Wait's influence seems to permeate musicologist wise guys nowadays, and yet it is influenced that much like the former the Mirror's lead singer Matt Boroff's essence on his new EP, it is a cement within the ridges of sound.
This is clear in the troubled and lovely calliope at the heart of "Garbage Man", the song goes round and round and Matt's vocals are a circular dread, or maybe a spiral of music constantly adding something to the end. But that isn't where Boroff is at, it is not his aim. On his new EP, Boroff is aiming for the things that you try and hide at the back of your mind, but which come back to haunt you in the wee small hours of the morning.
Matt is a New Jersey boy who moved to Austria at the turn of the century and formed the Mirrors. and reached the top of his powers with the astounding 2008 Elevator Ride, which, while a relation to Filling In The Cracks, has more clout to it. Filling In The Cracks is both too short and too moody: it is a disquiets kick at you. Stripped down to the essentials, there is constant nagging doubt to the songs.
If it was remotely bad, you could dismiss it, but all the songs are great, the playing immaculate and the atmosphere nearly impossible to shake off. The final song, "In The Loneliness". lingers on like a sad conversation with an old friend. It isn't melancholia, not the disruption of manic depression but the bone ache of sorrow. A beautiful thing but hard to search out, a misery loves company sound.
And we are talking about the brains behind "One Step" -a quasi-garage propulsive song that seems so unlike the solemn, dirge like blueness that permeates this EP. Sorrow isn't a bad POV for a rock band, both Nirvana and Blue October , to name but two, have made a career of it. And Matt embraces it. Indeed, it sounds like four songs Kurt Cobain might have written if he had done songs influenced by his own MTV Unplugged Ledbelly cover. What could be wrong with that?
Just this nagging doubt…
Grade: B+