RED SPAROWES
Every Red Heart Shines Toward the
Red Sun NR 045 CD
Neurot
Recordings
With eight
songs spread across nearly 62 minutes, Every
Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun is an epic ambient rock record best
experienced in its entirety: From the opening bass volley to the closing snare
hit, the members of Red Sparowes expertly navigate
the hidden vibrations of what seems like a preordained trajectory—chiming,
weeping, droning; gracefully descending, and then vaulting upwards, booming,
scraping the orchestral firmament before spiraling softly into the inevitable
comedown.
* * *
The Chairman: Where is the grain? The people
deceive their country. Relieve them of the ravages of the sparrow, and they
welcome the havoc of the locust. What guidance will they accept, if not Mine?
What punishment shall I mete out, if not everything at My
disposal?
The Proletariat: How is it that our Leader cannot
see us starving? Why do we continue to toil in vain? Is not revolution in the
hearts and minds of the people? If political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun, perhaps we are harvesting the wrong crops.
* * *
Red Sparowes’ second full-length release, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun,
was inspired by the foregoing events. Recorded at Louder Studios in San
Francisco with producer Tim Green (Comets On Fire, The Fucking Champs, The Melvins), the album features performances from drummer Dave
Clifford (formerly of Pleasure Forever and the VSS) and guitarist Andy Arahood (formerly of Angel Hair), both of whom had yet to
join Red Sparowes when the band recorded their 2005
debut, At the Soundless Dawn.
Clifford and Arahood join original members Cliff
Meyer (guitar, also of ISIS), Greg Burns (bass/pedal steel, formerly of Halifax
Pier) and Josh Graham (guitar, also of Battle Of Mice and visual comptroller
for Neurosis) in weaving a skillfully layered instrumental narrative that
combines the expanse of the Sparowes’ compelling live
demonstrations with the incomparable fidelity and precision of studio capture.
“I
definitely don't want people to think that I used all of this
communist-influenced imagery because we are in any way communists—or that I
just thought it ‘looked cool,’” Graham explains. “It was very deliberate
and fits into a paralleled theme. We identified immediately with the story
itself, and with the obvious connections to our band's namesake. First of all,
it's awe-inspiring that any government could convince its people to follow such
clearly ridiculous orders. Secondly, the [cover] art is a reflection of the
methodic qualities used in Chinese propaganda. Whether glorifying villainous
leaders or disastrous events, the art the government commissioned was always
very delicate and beautiful.”
* * *
Propaganda: The interim between At the Soundless Dawn and Every Red Heart… saw Red Sparowes undertake various tours both foreign and domestic
(including a US haul with Pelican, Big Business and Breather Resist), as well
as the release of split LPs with Gregor Samsa and Grails (both on Robotic Empire) and, most
recently, the Triad three-way split
seven-inch/CD with labelmates Battle Of Mice and Made
Out Of Babies.
Denouement (The Proletariat): …And so our labors bear fruit,
divorced though they might be from the strictures of orthodoxy, and bereft of
the voice that is used to spread untruths and subvert the will of the people.
Songs tumble from the sky like supreme directives, instilled with the
conviction of supernal instinct and navigated by the lodestar of imagination.
Warmed by the heat of electric current, they find their receptors in the heart and
mind of the collective subconscious, delivering a reminder of that which is
both human and divine…