“You only hit bottom when you stop digging, dreaming of a new world all night.“
For decades California has been regarded as the spiritual home of American punk. And Rohnert Park five-piece Ceremony are that rare beast, a band that honours that tradition whilst crossing every line they can to create a highwire balance act of raw and experimental music.
Their seventh album, Tell Me Your Dream, and second on Relapse Records, is ten tracks of white-knuckle, sucker-punching post-punk. And yet despite its immediate impact it’s a shame that it simply lacks the staying power of some of the band’s previous records.
Pre-launch single “Dark Summer“’s opens perilously close to “Regret“, arguably New Order’s last great single. Anthony Anzaldo’s guitar is suitably jangling and melancholic, but without the powerhouse of a melancholic dance rock anthem that that track turns into it never really catches fire. Jake Casarotti’s drums seem to be on autopilot. It’s saved by Justin Davis’s bass which does an immense amount of heavy lifting here and across the remainder of the album, giving Peter Hook a run for his money with its brooding intensity.
Across the album lyrics also seem to be surprisingly safe. Too often the lyrics settle for broad existentialism, missing the sly ambiguity and self-lacerating wit that made bands like The Fall so compelling. Take, for instance, “I don’t wanna regress/I don’t wanna default/If earth reflects heaven then/Heaven is not for me” in “Death Destruction Mayhem“ which just doesn’t have the same kick as say The Fall’s “Hit The North” with its slippery wordplay of “hit” — either “go to”, or “punish”.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not without later moments of brilliance. The record really gets going five tracks in with “Antenna“. It’s a wonder of a song that grows out of a simple pulsing synth chord from Anzaldo and Farrar’s vocalisation ‘la-di-daaa-da-da’, ditching the safety of post-punk pastiche for something more thrilling. What’s more, it’s so well produced by John Ries that the vocals have a clean edge in the mix over the live-sounding guitars, and the drums could have been recorded by Stephen Morris in Manchester in 1979.
The difficulty of a record like this is that reverential homage and imitation are separated by an incredibly thin line. For a band like Ceremony, (who are literally named after a song by Joy Division) that reverence is understandable. The downside to this is it means that frontman Farrar’s usual searing intensity is restrained far too much.
The highlight by far is “10 Planets“, with a brilliant bass from groove from Davis and Andy Nelson’s dancing guitar somewhere in the middle of Talking Heads, Parquet Courts and Bodega that slinks around like the soundtrack to a Viper Room party. It’s also a frustrating track because it offers a glimpse of how great a record this could have been: an album that doesn’t just pastiche British post-punk but instead builds on its legacy.
It’s an uncharacteristically cautious record from a band that has repeatedly redefined itself. Tell Me Your Dream is never less than engaging, but its most compelling moments only scratch the surface. It leaves me hopeful that their eighth album will be a giant leap forward.
