Thorn in my side

Here's a record review from Oxfordbands from July last year, of local post rock trio Hretha - I don't normally like this sort of stuff, there's too much of it around, but there's something about this CD that just works for me. The proposed parlour game in the first sentence is really only for Oxford music scenesters...then again, surely there's nobody from elsewhere bothering to read this...?

The pun in the title refers to the now anitquated letter in Hretha's name, that looks a little like a D, much used in Old English, and still used in Iceland. Except, it kind of doesn't because a Thorn is a similar "th" type letter that looks like a P with an extra stalk at the top; the D with a line through it is actually called an Eth, pronounced to rhyme with the 1st syllable in "leather", and I couldn't think of a pun for that. It's not a sound we use much in English. Some Spaniards sort of do when they say a word ending in -ez, don't they?

Like Cardinal Ximenez, his name is such good fun to say; if I were to be tortured to death under flimsy pretences by a vicious religious zealot, I'd like it to be him.

HRETHA – EP ONE

This week’s cocktail hour bagatelle is to imagine a version of 80s teen stalwart The Breakfast Club with Oxford bands recast as the central characters. We shan’t spoil the fun by making any suggestions, but we do feel that we can envisage a denouement in which acts find unlikely kinship in those from different genres, having spent a few evenings listening to the new Hretha EP. Judged by their live shows, we’ve always had Hretha (and yes, it is a “th” sound, even though it might look like a “d”, just admit you aren’t as orthographically astute as we) pegged as a straight up post rock trio. You know the sort: pretty good musicians, lots of instrumental fiddliness, dynamics instead of compositions. Their intricately cross-stitched guitar skeins have kept us diverted for half an hour here and there, but we’ve never felt them working too deeply into the consciousness. This EP changes all that with a collection of emotive instrumentals that can only be called wordless songs, and we find that our minds are drifting towards many of our favourite balladeers, even as it throws up the obvious references, such as Mogwai or Billy Mahonie.

“Knowing How To Carry” is a snowy waste of a tune, and buoys you aloft on the swell of a heart-rending melody; in much the same way as Oxford stalwarts The Workhouse do, Hretha manage here to communicate acres of emotion without resorting to verbal communication. The ‘cello may be something of a post-rock cliché, but the way its weary melody pulls against the funerary plod of the drums is quite gorgeous. We feel honour bound to use words like “glacial”, “shimmering”, “hyperborean” and lots of others we found in a dusty file marked “4AD” in the back of the NME storeroom. Sadly the rock out payoff is somewhat generic and unsatisfying, but the track still exhibits a delicacy their live shows have never captured.

No such criticisms of “Little Knows (Gino)” which doesn’t spend all its energies trying to be epic, and channels them all into just being a lovely wash of sound, in which wispy net curtains of guitar flap lazily in the breeze and a heavily reverbed elfin choir laments in the background. Again, there’s a vintage feel to the music, and it could easily be fitted into an odd space between Robert Fripp and Channel Light Vessel. Featherlight, brief, but far from forgettable.

We’re on more solid post-rock territory with “New Pastures”, which is probably the CD’s low point, even though it’s immaculately played; this is simply because it sounds like so many other bands doing the rounds, especially in the Battles flavoured three note motif at the opening, played in such clipped tones it sounds almost like a harpsichord. Even here, however, Hretha manage some surprises, as a brief interlude of dumb monolithic thrashing that wouldn’t embarrass local sludge metallers Beard Of Zeuss falls away to reveal a stately undead march, with plenty of tickled cymbal and amp fuzz. Eventually the density builds up to an overloaded climax that wouldn’t feel too out of place with Brian May soloing over the top before finally dying out to cluster of clicks and chitters (which may be down to a rather scuffed CD, we’ll admit, but it sounds good).

So there you go, plangent threnodies, wordless paeans, and cock rocking, all things we never thought Hretha dealt in until we heard the EP. “Repays repeated listens” is another cliché we found languishing in the NME vaults; they definitely don’t use that one anymore, they’re too buys trying to get you to throw all your records away and buy new ones every 2 months.