Do you prefer a whisper to a wail? Do you like to feel like you’re privy to the most intimate of confessions? Do you partake in the adherence to the lo-fi production made mainstream-friendly by Bon Iver? Committing to checking all of these boxes, Essex’s The Bank Trail (the work of one Ash Price) and Yorkshire’s geographically confused Lake Michigan (that one of one Chris Marks) unite their forces in a split EP for which they each contribute two original tracks and a cover. Brace yourselves for considerable languor, and a nagging feeling that all this would seamlessly fit a quirky Sundance movie.
First and foremost, The Bank Trail distinguishes himself from his colleague with the eschewing of the horrid fuzz/grain of poor recording equipment. While it might feature as an integral part Lake Michigan’s style, it would only hinder the reverberating clarity of the former’s guitar. ‘Absent’ and ‘Wildcard’ are both repetitive cycles of soft arpeggios, the former cutting through stretching background atmospherics and the latter through silence. The echoing reverb employed to ghostify Price’s voice might be said to step into overkill territory, but it’s perhaps the only thing keeping the man’s soft-spoken tones to feel anything other than banal. Those issues are still present on his cover of Nirvana’s ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ but the combination of guitar and piano actually does elevate it somewhat (in addition to something resembling chord progression).
Split by The Bank Trail & Lake Michigan
On the other side, Lake Michigan makes up for that downright hair-raising (and, worse still, erratic) grain by way of lovely guitar work. Like the soothing back and forth of gentle waves, Marks’ picking has a genre, ghostly, and almost fluid quality. The DIY texture of it all might convince some, but the drab vocal tones on display here surely can’t be all the, quite obviously, talented musican can deliver (you can hear him struggle at times to hit some of the graver notes… something that would’ve been corrected by transposing everything up a key or two). ‘Mid’ takes the same route, albeit with a little more atmospherics. On his cover of Desire’s ‘Under Your Spell’, made famous by the best 2011 film about Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver, Marks slows and tones it down (vocally, he struggles yet again early on). I’d hate to imagine the comments section if this had been uploaded by some Youtube dude…
There’s nothing inherently bad about the lo-fi aesthetic, but musicians seem to sometimes mistake DIY for a free pass in quality. Its best examples might sound like they’ve concocted their tracks, having barely woken up, on a broken 8-track, but in fact its “messiness” is the result of utmost precision. It’s almost cynical in a way, but it’s eminently better than actually being messy. This is actually messy and, because the two contributors quite clearly do have some quality amidst the rubble, I wish it weren’t. It’s a free download though, so as Karl Marx one said ‘you get what you pay for’*.
* he didn’t
1.5/5
’Split’ by The Bank Trail and Lake Michigan is out now on Close To Home Records.
The Bank Trail links: Facebook|Bandcamp|Twitter
Lake Michigan links: Facebook|Bandcamp
Words by James Berclaz-Lewis (@swissbearclaw)
