Murder By Death

The key to being a good critic isn’t about having better taste than anyone else. It isn’t about having some magical sense for the next big thing. It certainly isn’t about being the smartest person in the world (camera pans to a syffal writer picking his nose). No, the key to being a good critic is knowing how to pull the signal from the noise. Believe me, there is a lot of fucking noise. There are only so many hours in the day to give albums a cursory first listen (let alone anything after that). On a typical day, you’ll probably get 50-60 press releases from every band that can afford a PR company. From that barrage of soundcloud links and extremely liberal definitions of what other bands sound like this new band (‘Oh, your band sounds like The Police, Nirvana, and Mumford & Sons? Please go fuck yourself.’), you give about thirty seconds to each song and decide what albums you’ll fit in for full listening. Usually, this is where the process gets fucking painful. Most of the time, that thirty seconds you thought was interesting is just repeated over and over for an hour.

Things get a little more complicated when you’re getting hit with a barrage of albums that you *should* talk about. Right now is a perfect example. Just two months into 2015, we’ve got new releases from Sleater-Kinney, Father John Misty, Jose Gonzalez, Bjork, Dodos, The Decemberists, Robert Pollard, Phosphorescent, Ty Segall, Pond, Viet Cong, Sonny & the Sunsets, THEESatifaction, Bob Dylan, Screaming Females, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastien, Steve Earle, Justin Townes Earle, Dan Mangan, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead, Moon Duo, and D’Angelo. If you haven’t listened to all of those several times and have a fully informed opinion, what kind of jerkoff ‘expert’ are you? Well, that’s how the internet comment boards read anyway. Starting to get what I mean about pulling the signal from the noise? Just figuring out what you are going to listen to on any given day is like picking something off the menu at a New York diner; there are fifty pages and you have a one in ten chance of ending up on the toilet.

So, with all that being said, I can’t rightly put into words how big of a compliment I’m paying to Murder By Death’s newest album Big Dark Love when I say that it was a relief when the first track would pop into my earbuds. It meant that I could actually enjoy an hour of my day. Thoroughly enjoy it actually. Through all of the noise, Big Dark Love has stood up as the first album of 2015 that I’ve been able to sit back and enjoy from beginning to end.

Indiana-based Murder by Death first caught the attention of Thursday's Geoff Rickly while playing a gig together one night in their hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. Rickly brought the band, then called Little Joe Gould, to the attention of his friend Alex Saavedra (Eyeball Records), and they were signed immediately. At this point, the lineup was comprised of vocalist/guitarist Adam Turla, drummer Alex Schrodt, bassist Matt Armstrong, cellist Sarah Balliet, and pianist Vincent Edwards. They issued a 2001 self-titled EP as Little Joe Gould before the band eventually decided to change its name to Murder by Death, taken from the 1976 Robert Moore mystery of the same name. The bandmembers felt the new name better represented their ominous sound, which combined elements of artists like Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, and the Decemberists.

Edwards amicably parted ways with the group in mid-2004 to go back to school, and when his touring replacement also left by the year's end, the remaining members of Murder by Death decided to just carry on as a more rock-oriented quartet. Balliet, though, picked up keyboard parts along with her cello. After extensive touring, the members went back to college for a bit while writing their third album. Murder by Death eventually issued In Bocca al Lupo on their East West imprint, Tent Show Records, in May 2006.

In March 2008, Murder by Death released Red of Tooth and Claw on Vagrant Records. The band followed up again in 2010 with its fifth studio album, Good Morning, Magpie. Two years later Murder by Death returned with Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon, which found the band taking part in a crowd-sourcing campaign through Kickstarter for the vinyl release of the album. The campaign would find them becoming the third highest-earning band since the site launched.

That brings us to this week with the release of the seventh Murder by Death album in nearly fifteen years, Big Dark Love. This album is nearly perfect. Murder by Death have crafted a solid collection of tracks that play together as an individual piece. This is complex, interesting music that avoids crawling so far up its own ass as to be completely unlistenable for pop audiences. With the center of the album pivoting between the standout string playing of Balliet and Turla's sixteen ton vocal; beauty and the beast.

Big Dark Love is the album that I've been wanting The National to make for the last five years. The arrangements have a loose feeling, almost as if the songs were recorded live. Given that this is a band that includes both strings and keys in the mix, this is clearly the sign of a group that has played together a long time and still enjoy it. Furthermore, though I'd challenge the average white man to find a beat to clap along with, Turla's choruses have an infectious singalong quality that keeps the record moving and the listener attentive. Think of it like what might happen if Jonathan Richman took over vocal duties for San Fermin. Yeah, that's going to fester in your brain for a little while, isn't it?

It's hard to pick out even favorite tracks from this one because everything is so good. There isn't even a song that stands out as a poor choice. From the call-and-response title track, to the sentimental epic Send Me Home, to the spaghetti western album closer Hunted, Big Dark Love is just a great, unassuming record. The true crime is that I'm not too sure many others are going to take notice of it. Murder by Death is part of a stellar stable at Bloodshot Records that seem to fall into the indie black hole. That's okay. While everyone else will be talking about the 'genius' new records from Father John Misty, Bjork, or Mogwai, I'll be listening to Big Dark Love and having a helluva lot more fun.