June Of '44 - Engine Takes To Water

1. Have a Safe Trip, Dear
2. June Miller
3. Pale Horse Sailor
4. Mindel
5. I Get My Kicks for You
6. Mooch
7. Take It With a Grain of Salt
8. Sink Is Busted

I've gone by the intarnet name, or 'handle' as they used to call it in the 90's, Pale Horse Sailor for a really long time. 5 years at least? I don't know. It's a total bitch trying to give your email address to people, let me tell you that. Very few people get the 'Pale Horse' reference and even those who do don't understand why 'Sailor' is tacked on after. I thought it would be completely apparent to people that I was Captain Ahab, seriously. I mean was there ever a phrase more perfectly fashioned to describe him?

Well, whatever your opinion is, mine is the opposite. Unfortunately, I did not create this wonderful three-string dangle of words. That honor belongs to the fine, fine people that made one of the best albums about sailing and seas, the highly underrated June of '44.

I really don't know much about them, other than one guy has something to do with the band Rodan and later on some of them (or one of them) became another band called The Shipping News. I also know they came out of the Slint Spiderland era where American hardcore-ish indie-ish bands were starting to discover they could turn the volume up and down and up and down and oh lawdy dynamics?!

Well, as evidenced, I was never a really big fan of Slint. But something about this particular band managed to reel me in like a fish into frying pan. Maybe it was the drums that pulled me in first, the rhythms tighter and more exciting than anything else I was listening to then. Maybe it was the sharp, stacatto guitar riffs, as catchy and punchy as Hit Me Baby One More Time (lawl). Maybe it was the fact that I listened to them during that strange period of time where I just kept re-reading that passage from Moby Dick about biscuit and chowder. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the vocals, not at first anyway, but by the time they started screaming "PORT AND BOWWW, STERN AND STARBOAAAARRD" I was fucking sold, man.

On second thought, I think the rhythms had the most to do with it. I don't know what the drummer's name is, but he's definitely one of my favourite drummers. How, from the very first track even, he manages to emulate a rolling sea so accurately, is completely beyond me. You can literally feel the ship boards shifting under your feet, soaked with water and crumbling, rocking from side to side. All the other parts, the guitar parts, vocal parts etc, bring you the stories and the salt sea air but it's truly the drums that set you on deck, bringing you the motion of the ocean. The aptly titled first track, Have A Safe Trip, Dear, kicks off the album by throwing you out to sail through a terrible thunderstorm punctuated by periods of whirlwind calm.

And the fourth track is Pale Horse Sailor yey so you can all understand my name now. Damn I started this review last night while I was still drunk and I spent the whole day working today so I don't feel like continuing it anymore. Sigh. Exhausted exhausted yahoo! Just download the album, it's really good.



Engine Takes To Water (drop.io)