Album Review (again) - Graveyard - "Fever"

(There is, very occasionally, an album of such import that Chris and I both feel the need to take it on. I purposefully wrote this without having read Chris’ review, so it wouldn’t influence me.  I’ve gone back to read it now, and I’m thrilled that we independently hit on so many of the same ideas. Great minds and all that.)

Cutting out a lot of requisite details to the story, I used to work for a guy who was obsessed with the idea that every day, USA Today ran a full-color graphic on page 2.  He wasn’t really all that obsessed with the graphic - he was obsessed with the idea of templating, with the concept that something could follow the same structure, every day, and thus give the end user a predictable and familiar experience.

Graveyard, by virtue of being (the best) retro-rock band, is naturally given over to this concept.  There are only a limited number of permutations fuzzy blues-rock can take at this juncture, and Graveyard furthers the concept by tending to put similar songs in similar slots on their albums.  

That is, until Fever.

What we hear here from the Swedish titans of rock is a stripped-down, disarticulated experience that’s meant as a deliberate counter to the sullen introspectiveness of the previous album, 6. This new record is much closer to the motif we saw the band in two albums go, the thunderous Peace, than any other record in the band’s increasingly impressive catalogue, though Fever is an even more straight-ahead effort than that one.

Case in point, every Graveyard album comes equipped with a slow-burning, blues-muddled dirge, often the best song on the record.  “No Good, Mr. Holden,” “Slow Motion Countdown,” “Cold Love,” “No Way Out”...you get the idea.  Fever lacks any song that would qualify under those conditions and that in and of itself speaks to the band’s intended shift for this new collection of songs.  (The closest analog would be the deeply grooved “A Better Cut (Note to Self,)” and while effective, it’s outside the mold in that there’s a sinister undercut to it that menaces the entire track, and kinda sorta sounds like a Troubled Horse song.)

The musical phrasing on Fever is short and thus more aggressive, more than we’ve ever heard Graveyard to this point, and the guitar tone is appropriately edgy and grinding to match.  Go no further than “A Means to An End,” and hear a stylistic change into something more raw and unrefined. This is a simpler, sleazier Graveyard, which is unexplored territory for the band, and is further punctuated by no song going longer than four and a half minutes (until the very last one.)

Which probably all sounds like a polite way of saying that Graveyard is playing down to their competition.

But here’s the catch.  They’re such good songwriters and arrangers that they get away with it.

To go back to the templating argument, sure, Fever doesn’t sound like the Graveyard template, but take a step back at the larger picture, and see the genius of a head-nodding metronome like “Don’t Shoot!”  That’s where the idioms come into play.  Graveyard, over their last several records, going back all the way to Innocence & Decadence, has quietly and confidently displayed that they can compose in any vein of classic fuzz rock and be utterly compelling.  Fans will hear album opener “Back From the Grave” and at first be taken by surprise with the ferocity and dark-alley atmosphere of the song, but will ultimately grin as they realize the song has simply menaced the roots of “An Industry of Murder,” and given this new version to the world.

That, in the end, is the Graveyard template.  It’s worth repeating - we talk a lot around here about the two ways to be successful in music.  Either do something new, or do the familiar exceptionally well.  Graveyard is the standard bearer for the latter, they’re the top dog of the very idea, and there’s no one especially close to them.