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Spotlight – 49: Nosferatu D2

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You know when you hear a record so lyrically intricate, so linguistically floral and furled, so ornate that you just want to curl up in bed and decipher the twisting tunnels of sentences furrowed into the songs, relishing the deft turns of phrase or the vivid images the words cast to song conjure in your mind? I’m in the clutches of a torrid lyrical love affair such as this. The culprit is not a serenading sonneteer alas, but the tumid, morose, self-conscious prose of a The Fall-channeling Londoner named Ben Parker.

The band is Nosferatu D2.

I admit to jumping upon this band(wagon) a bit late: brothers Ben, the guitarist/lyricst, and drummer Alex coalesced as a band for a few short years, 2005 to 2007, made a record that couldn’t find distribution and broke up. Last year, their record We’re Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones on to Block Out The Noise was released posthumously by a fan, Audio-Antihero, on his own record label.

I could not be more grateful.

There is a harrowing, haunting despondency to this record which I have only encountered briefly in a few other records: being in your own isolated, pop-culture drenched world, music being your only tool of self-expression and empowerment… it’s a vague, unsettling feeling of disenchantment that every mid-teen to twenties crisis has brushed lingeringly close to. This record sums up this unnameable discontent so eloquently, dryly and disgustedly it’s almost uncanny.

Lyrically the record is stupefying, yet sonically it’s a raw, aggressive aural assault; a turgid maelstrom of Ben spitting out incendiary, despondent lyrics in a disgusted snarl, hurling words into your ear with impressive spit-fire precision while his guitar similarly shrieks and growls in what is admirably akin to early Modest Mouse, raking at you in competition with Alex’s muscular drumming.

I feel somehow that this record is important.

If you’re really curious to give it a listen, go to www.audio-antihero.com and order it. It’s super cheap and the guys really do deserve it. Otherwise, if you’d like to try before you buy, head to their Myspace for a quick listen.

[Here’s a video – Ed]

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