i screwed up big time, and i am not afraid to admit it. i missed out on snake oil’s album release show at the state house. that was on 4/27/2019 with deerhoof and glambat, and for days afterwards, i only heard about how great it was. so hey, i missed a great gig, happens all the time right? snake oil is not a band that you’d consider prolific; their albums are dense, layered, experimental wonders, and they come around infrequently. i think of them like comets — illuminating the sky only to vanish for an uncertain period of time. chalk it up to geographic and temporal noise — not all of the band members live in connecticut these days, and they’re all working on their own separate careers and projects. kelly l’heureux fronts ATRINA; emily lee plays in shearwater, droneflower, and loma; jason labbe frequently plays drums with bands in brooklyn (zachary cale, trevor healy); adrian van de graaff sits in on bass with many indie-and-or-jazz projects like rudeyna. you get the idea. space must be traveled, and time must be made.
and it’s for those reasons that i feel like an absolute creep for missing the state house show. opportunities to see them live are scarce, and their new record, dying of sunsets, adds only insult to injury. missing out on their release show would have been okay if the album was only fine. but that isn’t the case. no. dying of sunsets is fantastic.
dying of sunsets is weird, and dark, and melancholic, and surprising. it won’t be for everyone, but for fellow travelers that are tuned into this particular kind of wavelength, it’s spectacular. swans and daughters are easy comparisons, not because they sound anything like one another or like snake oil, but they tickle those same unlit pleasure centers of the brain. these songs are long, the musical ideas clever, and the vision uncompromised. it’s a rock record, to be sure, but it leans into prog, jazz, krautrock, and drone, keeping listeners on their toes. unlike similar experimental records, dying of sunsets is immediately great and enjoyable — it’s not a slow burn. opening with the clever rhythms via labbe + van de graaff, the album begins with a hypnotic groove that never lets go of the listener until the record’s final notes. those final notes, by the way, form an extended outro that lasts for several minutes, mimicking a sun (or moon) slowly fading beyond the horizon.
here are my favorite three moments. i had quite a bit of trouble whittling it down to three, as each of the six tracks on the album have several interesting, haunting moments just to themselves. anyways, here they are:
“pattern of skulls”: while this song rides on a killer, bouncing rhythm, its best moment arrives when it shakes loose of it. the chorus. oh, the chorus. and at the end, when a harmonizing voice joins the lead — it’s pure bliss.
“dying of sunsets”: this track feels, to me, like some ancient relic that was unearthed. it’s cursed of course, and its power comes from a strange magic that existed before language. the pre-chorus/chorus, when emily lee’s delivery becomes suddenly faster than the preceding verses is a highlight of the album. strangely, the song might be the most “accessible” of the bunch, just because it follows a traditional structure.
“blood moon”: kelly l’heureux’s guitar line punctures a hole in this song, like a black canvas slowly being ripped open. around the 3-minute mark, the rolling progression transforms the song from a monolith into a moving target. that target, though, moves on and on, fading away as the vocals remain.
you can buy the album here: https://snakeoilsounds.com/album/dying-of-sunsets and check out the band’s video for the title track below.
