There's some music that's too large for labels. And while many are generous with their use of the terms indie rock and chamber pop, neither one would quite do to describe the music of the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus. The Liverpool-based outfit have released a new album, Songs of Yearning, on Occultation Recordings, which transcends easy categorization. What's here is The Big Music, to borrow a phrase from Mike Scott, and it's big in the sense of both instrumentation and risks undertaken.
Songs of Yearning conjures up a mood and largely sustains it. More modern classical music than anything else, numbers like "Avatars" and "Ave Maria" suggest a religious awakening, or at least an awareness of the divine. A track like "Vespers", however, takes that mood and adds an element of unease to it. Building and surging, the cut recalls for me so many from the Children of God-era of Swans, with the vocals here pairing well with the guitar-scratches underneath the melody. Elsewhere, "Paradise" and the title track make a listener think of Gorecki and Taverner and other modern composers, the compositions here approaching a similar degree of holiness without the pretension. That style is perfected on the longest selection on Songs of Yearning, "Belonging/O Nata Lux", an elegant and elegiac journey through sadness, stillness, and reverence (of a sort). Producer Nick Halliwell wisely uses a light touch here, with the whole project sounding like a performance captured to tape late at night.
While compositions on Songs of Yearning are sung in multiple languages, the more straightforward bonus album, Nocturnes seems less cryptic altogether. It's a largely mournful collection, but the tracks work well together, with a listener drawn further and further into the void, to contemplate the vastness of it. The players here -- Paul Boyce (clarinet, keyboards, voice), Jon Egan (harmonium, other keyboards, voice), Leslie Hampson (percussion, guitar, keyboards, voice), Elisa Carew (cello), Hannah Harper (flute, piano), Jessie Main (voice), and Zander Mavor (bass, guitar) -- all deserve credit for understanding musical restraint, and how powerful silence can be.
On both releases, the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus rarely create a ruckus, but they do occasionally stir up something that sounds like a hint of chaos. That hint percolates throughout both Songs of Yearning and Nocturnes, and it's that hint of something unseemly about to surface that gives this an edge. For all the contemplation of the eternal here, there's an undercurrent that makes this gently unsettling.
Songs of Yearning and Nocturnes are out now via Occultation Recordings.
More details on Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus Facebook page]