George Dorn Screams
O'Malley's Bar
2009, Ampersand Records
I need you to close your eyes and focus on contriving a certain image. A rather small and tight bar immersed in obscurity. All plunged into darkness, filled in smoke and scent of despair. A shelter for outcasts set in the middle of nowhere. Outside, the dark clouds are gathering over the bleak sky. All senses are telling you that the storm is unavoidable. Despite the fact that the claustrophobic and thick atmosphere is giving you bad feelings about this place, the voice of common sense falls in silent as the sound of raindrops tapping at the sill can be heard. Will you dare to enter?
The niggling question is - what are the sounds reaching from behind the doors? If I hadn’t heard the new George Dorn Screams’ record I would seek for an appropriate tune somewhere between the graveyard ballads of Nick Cave or Tom Waits. O’Malley’s Bar put a new complexion on the situation. It created a new dimension of its own – the album provides listeners with 50 minutes of a music journey through different shades of melancholy.
Evading banalities I would compare this material to the artistic legacy of Joy Division’s joyless attitude, The Cure’s cure for optimism and My Bloody Valentine’s way to cause a blissful earbleed. Although the inspirations are noticeable, the band incorporated them into their own unique style, oscillating somewhere between shoegaze, slowcore and the spirit of new wave. To describe their previous album critics emphasized the fact that the songs were enrolling like a streamer. The new material is based on a different technique: constructing several layers of sounds around the vocalist’s voice, developing them, dosing the tension, evolving till the culminating point, and then letting the melodies fall into decay, vanish into thin air alongside with the listeners’ consciousness. No matter if the song Is speeding up or slowing down, taking you to some vulnerable and comfortable states of mind or becoming neurotic and chaotic at once – the specific charm is still present.
From the first seconds of ‘Circles’ which explodes with a powerful guitar riff, soon to be replaced with the softness of Magda’s voice, to the very last moment of ‘Messages From A Drunken Broom’ , which is a great example to define the band’s term to call their own music, namely ‘melodramatic pop-song’ - O’Malley’s Bar proves the ambition of George Dorn Screams. This record is not only a testimony of John Cogelton’s production skills, but also a result of the big endeavor, extraordinary talent and heart given by the band to their work. It shows that they are not staying in one place, but still broadening their horizons. What is more, it confirms that they are able to set themselves against high expectations, endure the pressure and - after releasing one of the most critically acclaimed polish albums of 2006 – leave the rivals far behind, because it seems that the year 2009 belongs to George Dorn Screams as well.
So, would you like to spend an unforgettable evening in O’Malley’s Bar?
Check it out:
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