Rhode Island doesn’t have a huge history of producing popular bands. Sure, Talking Heads met there (at RISD) and Kristen Hirsch and Tanya Donelly grew up there, but they were always associated with different places (New York & CBGB’s, the Boston Subbacultcha scene). If The Dear Hunter continue their arc, they have the potential to be the band you think of when somebody says “Providence music scene”.
The main voice of The Dear Hunter is Casey Crescenzo, and he’s ambitious. DH is conceived as a six act story about a nameless man (known only as “the boy” or “the dear hunter”) living, growing up, and dying in the early 20th century; each act is an album (of which there are currently three – they are paused after a non-story project and searching for new label options). Act I: The Lake South, the River North then is the beginning, and a fairly bold statement.
Act I begins with a series of snake-like skin changes. ”Battesimo del Fuoco” is a folky, acoustic bit with airy harmonies reminiscent of Fleet Foxes (though DH precedes them by a couple of years). That’s followed by a brief instrumental interlude and then “City Escape”, which sounds like nothing so much as The Bad Plus covering Coheed and Cambria (maybe the other way around; the rhythms stay pretty straight, and the spidery guitars have a little much distortion). The first half of Act I closes with “The Inquiry of Ms Terri”, a mid-tempo showtune version of Muse doing their I-want-to-be-Radiohead thing. It’s big, audacious, and a good contender to take on Rise Against’s The Sufferer and the Witness as the best first half of a record in recent history.
The trouble starts with the next song, “1878”, where the record sets itself to awkward softness and forgets to go anywhere else. It’s sad, because the first half has so much going for it that the descent into blandness is both unexpected and largely unforgivable. ”The Pimp and the Priest” tries, with its trumpet warbles and waltzy atmosphere, but can’t help coming off as a paler version of Muse’s soft end (Crescenzo does an incredible imitation of Matthew Bellamy imitating Thom York). All these bands who have so much Radiohead in their blood should remember that the most potent songs of their records are the closers (e.g. “Tourist” and “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”).
Lyrically, it’s not unfair to compare The Dear Hunter to Coheed and Cambria. They are telling a dense, complicated story that won’t have fruition for a number of years. With the promise Act I has made about where the rest of it could go, Crescenzo’s human tale could end up as satisfying and meaty as C&C’s sci-fi epic.
Final Grade: B+. Act I opens so very strongly it can’t be ignored. Again, a weak second half makes the record less satisfying as a whole. Download “City Escape” and “Battesimo del Fuoco”.
Your Shitty Record Won't Review Itself 