Every so often I discover an artist or group that I'm downright embarrassed not to have stumbled across sooner. Cerberus Shoal is a prime example. Crash My Moon Yacht is their fifth album in five years. I wish I'd found them sooner.
You might find Cerberus Shoal lingering on the edge of the post-rock crowd, but they're much more than that. Anchored by contemporary prog-rock, Cerberus Shoal weaves a delicate tapestry of traditional Eastern instruments, dub rhythms and mimimalist/neoclassicist composition. There's a superficial similarity to Godspeed You Black Emperor, but Godspeed's music carries with it a set of fairly static expectations and goals that Cerebus Shoal's compositions elude. Rather than confining themselves to sketching a series of drawn-out ambient valleys and extended, guitar-fueled cathartic peaks, they go where the day takes them, often employing a lighter, happier touch.
"Changabang I" begins in a cheerful mood, throwing out a lot of bells, horns and toys in a playful nod to gamelan music. It is deceptively festive, so the first time you truly realize what you're getting into is on "Breathing Machines". Four minutes into the song, the brooding atmosphere unexpectedly ignites in a fierce conflagration of squealing guitars and frantic hand-drums. A series of repeated, interlocking rhythms forms a musical mesh, eventually dissolving with the release of a mournful keyboard lead that frequently imitates the squalling sadness of an electric guitar. It's hard not to feel electrified after listening.
Obscure instrument fans will rejoice: Crash My Moon Yacht credits more than thirty different instruments beyond the usual guitar/bass/keyboard/drum kit basics. Unexpected
sounds -- and familiar sounds in unexpected places -- make the album an aural feast. Note the plaintive horn that crops up in "Elle Besh" to deliver a line straight out of a James Bond score, knocking the fourteen-minute song's introspective mood askew. Likewise, catch the song's staggering finish, in which staccato strings are goosed by an ethereal singing saw. The Eastern-toned "Long Winded" is something of a play on words, creating musical weather with gongs and cymbals, then blowing over into a nervous jungle bossa-nova that evolves into a loose-limbed rock song. "Yes Sir, No Sir" even ventures into understated pop-jazz vocal ballad territory, though it retains the strikingly punctuated peaks of post-rock, sliding gradually into a sort of pop noir.
The wistful "Asphodel" breaks out the vocals once again, painting warm sounds with plucked strings, subtle horns, friendly vocals and off-key melodies. It brings suitably understated closure to this quietly striking album.
Like the three "Changabang" tracks that divide it, Crash My Moon Yacht never becomes overwhelmingly heavy or pompous. It seems to focus, instead, on the unexpected -- on turning preconceptions upside down, shaking them and rifling through whatever falls out of their pockets. In a world where even improvisational rock is becoming tired and predictable, you need to discover Cerberus Shoal. Do it now, before they get another five albums under their collective belt and the task of getting to know them becomes so daunting that it frightens you off. That would be a sad loss.
