Hot Dreams
Timber Timbre
Released by Arts & Crafts
Timber Timbre’s Hot Dreams is a haunting throwback that sounds like it would feel at home in a Tarantino western.
This is the band’s fifth studio effort, coming three years after 2011’s Polaris-nominated Creep on Creepin’ On.
While Hot Dreams features many of the band’s traditional calm yet eerie vibes, the album takes a different direction with it. The band flits between hyper-sexual jazzy tunes like the titular “Hot Dreams” and ghost-town echoes of “Bring Me a Simple Man.”
They layer the album with fascinating instrumentals, and play with dissonance to create a density that wasn’t always there on their earlier albums.
The album begins with the dreary “Beat the Drum Slowly,” where Taylor Kirk sings of “a faded trail of a golden age/flickered out into celluloid ashes.” It builds to a chorus through laboured snares, and garbled noises permeate the end. By the time the off-kilter strings enter in the coda, it seems quite evident a one-handed serial killer is lurking behind the listener.
The album immediately does a 180 and changes pace to the seductive “Hot Dreams,” which opens with the line “I wanna dance with a black woman.” The song’s warm strings and slow, deliberate drums bring the listener into a swing horn duet that saunters its way out of the song.
“Curtains!?” is one of the album’s high points. It is filled with the high-noon drama of a spaghetti western, and punctuated by staccato organ punches. The “!?” at the end of the song’s title seems tacky until the music takes on the form of that punctuation through strange chords and carefully planned musical hits.
“Resurrection Drive Part II” is a delightfully creepy instrumental piece that sits midway through the album and keeps the energy up.
“Grand Canyon” has a determined guitar line reminiscent of The Shadows’ “Apache” behind Kirk’s deep vocals that sing of a flight over America.
The album begins to drag a little bit around “Grand Canyon.” For a while it seems as though the album is going to fall victim to the dreaded weak back half, but the second last track, “Run From Me” evolves into possibly the best track on the album.
It starts with Kirk doing his best Sinatra crooning over subtle piano chords. “Run from me darling/you’d better run for your life,” sings Kirk as the song starts to pick up halfway through. A guitar build-up enters in, followed by a female voice singing a piercing melody. As the strings and drums kick in, it becomes clear this isn’t just a slow crooning song. The galloping bassline breaks in as the song hits its stride and rides like a hero into the sunset.
The album ends on another dark instrumental, “The Three Sisters.” One can just imagine the sunset pan over a desert town post-shootout as the horns drone out. Roll credits on Timber Timbre’s haunting voyage.
