A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

OK wow it's another of their albums where the songs start good and get better and better as the album goes along. Every time I think I've found my favourite song on the album, the next one kicks in, and it's even better...

OTM, at least on initial listen

yo, hardcore fanboying aside, what is this album??? There was a very linear progression between "Disconnect" and "Ghostory" (which I liked but was sorta lukewarm on) but this one sounds SO INTERESTING, like it's so distinctively them but for a band whose sound is so singular, where there is so much potential to regurgitate similar ideas, this manages to have more surprises than I would have expected.

feeling "Signals" and "Music Takes Me" the most so far I think. I've got this playing at work while multitasking so I haven't even paid attention to the lyrics of anything yet.

This was fantastic

One thing that sticks out in the lyrics is that the fire metaphor from Ablaze comes up in a number of other songs. It seems to me that a lot of it is about gratitude, hope, and restoration.

"this is our time" just sort of knocks you for six as a closer, right?

like the king album, this really feels like the sort of thing that's going to give and reveal more and more with each listen

"Confusion" is just perfect, this is a really special album

I'm so happy everyone likes this

Confusion is giving me serious Julee Cruise vibes. Such a stunning song.

I was thinking Eno vibes.

It's all quite lovely. The farewell that shouldn't've been but necessarily is.

Open Your Eyes sounds even more devastating in context. still trying to process the rest of it all but my god, this record. my heart hurts.

it's all great but I've become particularly enamoured of "a thousand times more"

This is a great record. If Hollywood were smart, they'd insert "On My Heart" into every trailer for every movie.

as I opened this thread I noticed the outro of "open your eyes" was playing at the coffee shop I'm currently at (I'd had headphones on) and I teared up

Everything's that I could have said has been said already, but the last three/four songs… what a finale.

I can't be wasting my time with the daggers
When guarding the love in my heart is the battle

The problem (for me, probably not for others) is that right now, The Story Of This Record is kind of getting in the way of me working out what this record actually is.

On one hand, I feel like I've been waiting for it for so damn long (understandably so) that it's been built up into such a thing in my head that no music could ever live up to that expectation. On the other hand, knowing the circumstances of what the creators went through to bring us this record means my brain freezes up in a kind of "HOW DARE YOU" whenever I try to engage any critical facilities with regards to this record.

I just really want to separate this beautiful thing from all the emotional weight the poor thing has to carry I guess.

The problem (for me, probably not for others) is that right now, The Story Of This Record is kind of getting in the way of me working out what this record actually is.

I'm glad someone said that, because I've been having a similar problem. Ultimately I'm not sure the record and the story are really separable, because no matter how faithful Alejandra might have been to the original vision, this is not the exact record that would have emerged in normal circumstances.

At the same time it doesn't feel like a record about bereavement to me, it feels like a breakup album, but the grief can't help but overshadow and inform that, and not just because you can view so many of the lyrics both ways.

I'm still sort of interested in the order of the creative process behind this record. Obviously Benjamin's parts were recorded in their entirety by the time he died, the Guardian interview seemed to suggest that Alejandra had written most of the songs/lyrics before his illness. So she was 'completing' an album that had been conceived in 'normal' circumstances, rather than rewriting whole songs to reflect the new circumstances?

I can't actually imagine what it must have been like completing this album, by the way. Most people can more-or-less cope with losing a friend, loved one, collaborator or future livelihood, but losing all of them at once. Fucking hell.

(With the exception of Confusion, I mean, I know that was written later)

I keep reading all of these interviews, and it's just getting like it's too much, but I can't stop reading them...

http://m.pitchfork.com/thepitch/1039-school-of-seven-bells-alejandra-deheza-on-the-loss-of-her-musical-soulmate-benjamin-curtis/

I can't imagine what it's like to try to promote this record, bringing all this stuff up over and over again. Like, is that helpful, is that part of processing and dealing with grief?

I was talking with my Mum shortly after he died, and she's a priest, part of her job is talking people through the grieving process and she kept saying, no it's important to talk about the person you've lost - but I can't imagine having to do that so publicly, and with the press, and trying to promote a piece of work through it. That just seems an impossibly difficult task. It's emotionally hard reading it; I can't imagine saying it over and over to different journalists. Alley is way braver than I'll ever be.

I'm listening to the album over and over - it seems like all I want to hear at the moment - but it's this compartmentalised process of separating "here's this amazing new album from what was my favourite band" from going over the story of this loss over and over in the press. I have to not think about what it means (especially since this is the first of their albums that I've KNOWN what it was about) in order to connect with it. One of the things I always loved about this band was their lyrics were so arcane and abstract that it was possible to project your own stories and needs onto. Now it's like there's only one interpretation that the stories are locked down to, and I'm finding that strange.

I'm mostly just concentrating on the little musical details, and finding things to be thrilled by: the way that the vocal melody on Elias echoes / pays homage to the vocal on Joviann, that tickles me. The speak-singing bits on On My Heart, how they shoot out at right angles to one another. The rising distortion that swallows the end of A Thousand Times More (I wish there were 1000x more distortion - that could easily have wigged out into a Put Your Sad Down wig-out). The freaking bassline on Music Takes Me. There's so much in here!

As an observer it feels nice to read this, I remember reading your comments about Alpinisms back then, I think about choral rounds, and how it helped me enjoy the band then.

That's a beautiful elegy from Aley. I hope she wasn't forced to talk to paul de revere though, that guy sucks

Well, yeah, each interview in isolation is really beautiful and moving, and she speaks really well and with great poise about something obviously very devastating. But the cumulative effect of reading many of them in a row is a little unsettlingly like, well, grief porn. These are also really moving:

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/school-of-seven-bells-sviib/#_

I mean in this one ^^^^^ she talks about how some interviews are really hard. And again in this one:

http://larecord.com/archive/2016/02/23/school-of-seven-bells-interview-alejandra-deheza

I don't know how to balance my curiosity, as a fan, to read every interview, every piece about this record to find out how it was made, with my discomfort as a human being, feeling like the whole interview and promotion process was a heavy experience for someone I respect a lot. Just voicing my discomfort, and not knowing if my response should be "stop reading if it's upsetting you, you dummy" or "she wouldn't do it if she wasn't OK with it, so it's fine".

I've kinda tried to avoid the promo/interviews surrounding this release and basically attempt to listen to the album as a piece of music and take it for what it is.

I am just noticing the strummed guitar in the bg of "On My Heart" and it is giving me some Spacemen 3 vibes

I think this is a very good album but for some reason I am not completely immersed in it in the same way I was for the previous three. I don't know if I'm hesitant to engage because of the unavoidable heaviness of emotion associated with this album, if I'm just not in the right headspace to dive as deeply into this as I have their previous work, if I've saturated myself with their sound, or some combination of the three. I do think it's me and not the album because I don't think the songwriting on this is any weaker than their previous releases; it's just not engaging me the way I thought it would.

This is really the first of theirs I've heard and I'm finding it intoxicating. A Thousand Times More is a current standout, though I can see that changing from week to week based on its consistent strength. It's just such a beautiful album.

"The Night" is the ninth most popular SIIVB song on Spotify and "Face to Face On High Places" isn't in the list AT ALL

because it is above #1

Ghostory is sounding as magnificent as ever tonight, particularly 'Low Times' and 'Scavenger' ...

Thanks for inadvertently reminding me to go back and listen to "I L U" on a loop for the last 45 minutes. Top 10 song of the decade for me.

I don't know if I could comfortably say it was in the Top 10 of the decade, but it's definitely one of my favourite songs released this decade. My favourite song on that LP by miles.

i want you
to know that
i love "I L U"

"Ablaze" however is Top 10 of the decade easily

If I had to put together a personal "Best of SVIIB" then 'Ablaze' would be on it without a doubt. I could say that about quite a few SVIIB songs, though.

"Open Your Eyes" has made me cry so many times, and it still gets to me even though I've heard it so many times.

Still miss ya, Ben.

Alejandra Deheza has done a really wonderful new DJ mix, which features some new original music?!?! (Which will be an immensely pleasing surprise to any SVIIB fans out there.)

https://soundcloud.com/coralmorphologic/cccmix3

Wow, thanks for this! Won't be able to listen to now but definitely this weekend sometime.

Disconnect From Desire bangs like a mofo

It just gets me that on top of the tragedy itself the band seem almost a bit lost to history now. There s should be at least four more albums they would have done by this point.

SVIIB DJ set and a live show from 2012 just posted here: https://ijwthstd.blogspot.com/2023/11/culture-collide-2012-oct-3-4-5-6-7.html

Sadly, despite the careful "DSM6 -> PAC6LC3B -> R-09HR -> Soundforge -> FLAC", it still sounds as though it was recorded on an old dictaphone. Still nice to hear, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpLseaHz0w

Listening to the glorious Ghostory and the above EP this morning. They never put a foot wrong, imho. Miss them.

i was just thinking about reviving this thread a few days ago after "Scavenger" came up on shuffle

same, miss them a lot

Still very much do.

The Conga Room here in LA recently closed after a long run. The club is legendary as a Latin music venue but occasionally would have an out-of-place booking - including this spectacular 2011 show with Benjamin in full guitar-hero mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IRzQMG8zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGR9oiMOpMc

I believe that is the amazing Chris Colley on drums (...and hard to tell but is he also triggering the electronics?)