Posts Tagged ‘We’ll be Piranhas’

Eamon The Destroyer – Radio Sessions

Posted: 1 February 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Bearsuit Records – 31st January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a while since we’ve heard form Bearsuit Records, and from Eamon The Destroyer, too, with Harold Nono’s The Death of Barra slipping out quietly in October, and the last ETD release being the Alternate Piranhas EP last April. Ok, so it’s not so long in the scheme of things, but in recent months, while the world has spun into new realms of insanity, the wonderful wibbly weirdness this label specialises in has been sorely missed.

As the factual, functional title suggests, this release features tracks recorded for radio sessions, recorded for In-Tune (BCfm 93.2 FM), broadcast in September of 2024, and Majjem Radio, broadcast at the tail end of the year. And if another release with no new material seems like overkill, since the last ETD was a set of remixes from second album We’ll Be Piranhas, which came out in October 2023, then it’s pleasing to be able to report that, no, while this may well be something of a stop-gap release, it’s a worthy addition to the catalogue. It not only provides some insight into what one may call the ‘promo cycle’ of an album, particularly for a DIY act, but also casts a different light on the songs, being stripped-back acoustic guitar-based renditions of the songs – which are a 50/50 split of choice cuts from We’ll Be Piranhas and its predecessor, A Small Blue Car.

The original versions may be sparse and lo-fi in their production, but that production, and the prominence of droning, wheezing synths is what really defines them. That’s not to detract from the songwriting or performance at all, but the downtempo, downcast mood is heightened significantly by the execution, and that thick, hazy sound is integral to that.

However, hearing these songs played straight, as it were, is something of a revelation. The parts are essentially unchanged, but apart from a bit of reverb, and some vocal layering, these takes are more live-sounding, as could be performed by one man with a guitar and a pedalboard or synth with a few loops.

A far shorter rendition of ‘Underscoring the Blues’ still packs in the magnificent oddness that encapsulates everything that’s special about both Eamon and the whole Bearsuit aesthetic, suddenly spinning off from a sparse picked folksy guitar into a fantastical fairground of whirling, waltzing organ.

I’ve written previously that Eamon The Destroyer’s songs have a certain quality which casts a long, bleak shadow of lugubriousness over the soul, and how the effect is, for me, at least, similar to listening to Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate. It’s an outstanding album, but it’s dark in a way which goes beyond the crushing lyrics of ‘Avalanche’, ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag’, and ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. What I’m trying to articulate here is that there’s a special place for sad songs, songs which have a mood-altering effect, and this is Eamon The Destroyer’s strength. The lyrics are largely abstract and often difficult to decipher, but the feel is inescapable.

The ‘Avalanche’ on here, which first appeared on A Small Blue Car isn’t a cover of the Leonard Cohen song, but the stark atmosphere hits just as hard. It’s all about the minor chords, and the monotone croon. ETD adds layers of extraneous noise way down in the mix which adds tension to an already tense soundtrack.

Not because it sounds in any way similar, but ‘The Choirmaster’ calls to mind Chris Rea’s ‘On the Beach’ with its wistful tones and twisted hints of flamenco, and wraps the release with a vibe that’s almost uptempo, despite the heavy undercurrents of melancholy.

It’s the end of one of the longest, darkest, bleakest Januaries in living memory: we’ve been battered by storms, by global politics, by relentlessly traumatic news of war, of.. of… you name it. If you’re looking for a lift, steer clear of Eamon the Destroyer. But The Radio Sessions is nevertheless essential listening, showcasing the quality of the songwriting which lies beneath that fuzzing haze and reverb, and remember: it’s ok not to be ok.

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Eamon the Destroyer – We’ll be Piranhas

Posted: 1 November 2023 in Albums
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Bearsuit Records – 31st October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Just a little over two years since the idiosyncratically-monikered Eamon the Destroyer arrived with his debut single ‘My Drive’, he’s gone from strength to strength – to the extent that his output has erupted, Godzilla-like, expanding and flexing immense musical muscles. Sort of. Because Eamon the Destroyer’s work is, despite the connotations of a raging beast laying waste to entire civilizations with a single roar, incredibly intimate, with tension building from the introspective minimalism of the songs. With the release of the debut album A Small Blue Car and a remix / reworking of said album landing in quick succession, the arrival of We’ll be Piranhas seems swift.

We’ll be Piranhas finds Eamon the Destroyer (any truncation of the name feels wrong: Eamon too casual and to cuddly; the Destroyer simply unrepresentative) pushing the parameters of experimentalism, conjuring the sonic equivalent of the surreal oddness of the album’s cover, which looks like a three-way split-screen of medievalism, Anglo-Saxon fable, and a deranged reimagining of some of Captain Cook’s sketches of newly-discovered species with what appears to be a polar bear resting its chin on a narwhal, while gulls look on and rabbits look away. Or something.

‘The Choirmaster’ is both droney and playful, quirky, and mellow, until it spins off its axis and into a whole other world of spiralling prog and doodling daftness. It certainly packs a lot into five strange and disorientating minutes. Single ‘Rope’ is glitchy, awkward, and feels like it doesn’t belong to anything, and suddenly, it lurches too life with a loping rhythm and fuzzy synths which provide a backdrop to tense, almost strangled vocals, hushed, strained, and gravelly. Not for the first time, I long for a lyric sheet as the scratchy vocals render the words difficult to decipher, but this is perhaps his most vitriolic piece to date; more often than not, Eamon the Destroyer croaks melancholy: here, there’s a fire, and it carried through into the wheezing clatter of ‘Sonny Said’. There’s a moment around the mid-point I get a pang of Seventeen Seconds-era Cure. But it’s fleeting, and nothing is pinpointable, particularly in this swirling maelstrom of a piece.

When it comes to Bearsuit releases, I often find myself using and reusing the word ‘weird’ as a descriptor – mostly because it’s the thing that really defines the label. While the likes of Harrold Nono spin Eastern hues into spirals and spin drifts of experimentalism, We’ll be Piranhas finds ETD really going all-out to try stuff. And the result is brain-bending.

‘Underscoring the Blues’ somehow manages to melt fairground oddness with The Doors and prog and, well, all sorts, to blur into a curious cocktail.

It’s difficult – if not impossible –to listen to this album and feel ‘normal’. It feels like the soundtrack to a dream: one of those weird dreams where familiar places aren’t quite right – the walls of familiar rooms are different, doors and windows are in the wrong place, and continually moving, and you look to make your way out and suddenly the door has vanished. The floor is moving and familiar faces warp and acquire new, alien aspects. You don’t know who you are or what’s going on, but you know that this isn’t what you expected as the sights and sounds of the familiar melt into one another. You feel your sense of time and space begin to crumble. Where am I? What even is this?

It feels like isolation. It feels like… like… like numbness, confusion. You feel your body tense, the backs of the legs growing taut. The title tracks sends everything spinning and whirling every whichway, and there is no easy way to assimilate this, and the same is true of the woozy glitchings of the desolate ‘A Call is Coming’. Ignore the call; decline it. Look inwards. Woah, something isn’t quite right.

We’ll be Piranhas leaves you feeling detached, askance, apart, removed, not quite right. It’s an introspective work delivered from on the cusp. On the cusp of what? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it’s best not to.

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