Gosteleradio - Great Deeds Against The Dead

Gosteleradio have created something unique in Great Deeds Against The Dead. Modern without being unsophisticated, layered without sounding excessive, calm without being subdued. It's indie pop without being a blatant attempt to find hooks. The hooks are there of course, but they come to life naturally.

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The mood is set with the opening track Crimean War Song, a pacemaker for what is largely an ethereal feeling album, owing to the recurring organ and echoey lead guitar. Liberal use of synth and vocal effects contribute to create distant, other-worldly soundscapes with tracks that slowly melt into one warm ball as the album unfolds, and piano and acoustic guitars appear from time to time, usually low in the mix to just add a textured sound here or there.

Instrumentals make up three of the eleven tracks on Great Deeds Against The Dead, in a manner that's not dissimilar to the early releases of The Panics, where instrumentals are used to reinforce the overall texture and mood of the album. Built up steadily by its three-minute instrumental intro The Troubles, Guillotine peaks to achieve grandeur without grandiose. This drawn-out crescendo technique is used to great effect twice more with the other two instrumentals on the album.

At two minutes, the subtly upbeat  Elysian Fields (ill-gotten gains), is an immediate standout; perhaps the only thing lacking is length. Fleshed out for a minute or two longer there's a lot that could be done with the distant vocal harmonies and jangly pop sound. As it stands it just nibbles at your ears, promptly departing from this pop sound to launch into the soaring Santana-esque guitar driven instrumental The Centre Cannot Hold.

Perhaps Greet Deeds Against The Dead's best asset is the sheer restraint shown in creating a cohesive, singular album. Glass Clouds, the pick of the album, has a chord progression that could have been approached in any number of more traditional ways to create a track that is at odds with the rest of the album, but the devotion to cohesion is what makes this album interesting.

It's one of those albums you'll find yourself reaching for for a quiet night at home; kept it on the shelf next to Air. It's a copout to call this an ideal background album given the sheer quality of the understated lyrics, but it does have an atmospheric quality. Really it's an album that suits a mood. You probably won't find that mood before heading out on a Saturday night, nor on a Monday morning commute into work. But if the lights are dimmed, the cork is off the bottle of red and TV isn't the answer, Great Deeds Against The Dead may well be.

Gosteleradio's Great Deeds Against The Dead is released May 7 via MGM Distribution.