-
1 of 10
-
2 of 10
-
3 of 10
-
4 of 10
-
5 of 10
-
6 of 10
-
7 of 10
-
8 of 10
-
9 of 10
-
10 of 10
Drum, bass duo make goth rock, not dance music
Archive
Comments
Story
The two members of Clatter, Amy Humphrey and Joe Hayes, have a
thing for coffee.
For one thing, they included a package of organic French roast
Mexican coffee (Is it French or Mexican? I don’t know) with
the press kit for their sophomore album, Blinded By Vision, Clatter
is also the reincarnation of the band Clatter Bean (get the coffee
theme?).
Maybe Clatter picked up its coffee jones in Seattle. Clatter
Bean was from there, after all, and rumor has it people from
Seattle drink a lot of coffee.
Humphrey, who sings and plays bass, and Hayes, who plays drums,
left Seattle for exciting central Missouri. Here, they hooked up
with a guitarist and recorded Clatter’s first album.
Soon after, the guitarist left, and Humphrey and Hayes decided
to go it alone and guitarless.
Which brings us to the recently released Blinded By Vision,
goth-rock made only with drums, bass and Humphrey’s brooding
vocals.
The band’s sound bears a resemblance to Evanescence, the
band currently in MTV rotation fronted by the cute girl with pasty
skin and spiky black hair.
On Blinded By Vision, the bass crunches and Humphrey sings lines
such as “Lines of Pain Cutting Me / Creasing my forehead /
Filth infecting me” (“Black Karma”). This is not
happy music.
Humphrey’s vocals take some inspiration from Tori Amos but
lower the pitch and darken the tone to sound like a new
angst-filled Amos.
These vocals matched with the heavy rhythm create an air of
spookiness. Check out “Nevsky Prospekt,” a song sung
entirely in Russian, for some extra spook.
But where is Clatter taking this sound? The band is all rhythm
and no melody with Humphrey’s low and tedious vocals and no
guitars.
Other than cymbal crashes, speakers don’t even need
tweeters to play Clatter.
To its credit, Clatter uses less production and synth work than
other goth-rockers like Type O Negative or Evanescence, and
Clatter’s sound can be described as less elaborate
(roots-goth?).
But, for all the proclaimed originality about its guitarless
rock sound, Clatter is not exactly taking it in uncharted
directions.
The music is still gloomy, the rhythm is still thick, the vibe
is still foreboding and Clatter does little to define itself in the
goth-rock genre.
Eric Linge, The Maneater (U. Missouri)