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Caligari: What You Hide
Caligari's
strange mixture of psychedelic, gothic and 80s new wave influences
beautifully emulates their namesake the dark, German expressionist film
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." Their
newest album, What You Hide, explores the mysterious nightmare world of
the evil Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist Cesare.
The dark, foreboding landscape the band will cross is mapped out early in the album with the opening track, consisting simply of cymbals, rising feedback and the industrial sounds of metal on metal. While comparisons to New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen are inevitable and undeniable, Caligari takes these influences and twists them into a personal vision. "Solitude" and "Riding Low This Time" are the most recognizable dance songs, with faster beats friendly to body movement. "Come On Up" and "Heaven, Hell & the Hereafter" represent the more gothic end of the spectrum, with dark lyrics, minimal instrumentation and slower tempos. Singer and guitarist Dennis Kane determines the mood of each song with his wide vocal range and diverse singing styles. While a mournful sense of desire, longing and desperation pervades his songs, Kane has the ability to tactfully deliver his sadness, much like singer Robert Smith of The Cure, without overwhelming his audience with melancholy. The only exception to the rule is not attributed to the lyrics or singer, but to Leffler's keyboards on the disconsolate track "Heaven, Hell & the Hereafter." The endless repetition of the same pain-laden keys leaves the listener feeling drained almost to the point of irritation. While variation in the keyboard lines could end up breaking the spell of Caligari's most gothic and somnambulistic song, variation is nevertheless much needed. The
energy in songs such as "Not Perfect" relays the same desperation
through much more diverse means. Paul
Bernardi's throbbing bass line begins this track, overlaid with sliding
electronic sounds from the keyboards. Kane
breaks out lyrics like "you wake up and you realize/that your past is just
a pack of lies/and you're balanced on the edge of today/waiting for a
push." The rising energy of
the song, couples with the lyrics to form a much more intense and strangely
agreeable desperation than that engendered by songs like "Heaven,
Hell." Many
of the songs on What You Hide are carried and dominated by Kane's strong
singing ability, but "Mute," (appropriately titled for its lack of
lyrics) demonstrates the band's instrumental talents.
Driven almost entirely by Bernardi's bass and Dave Svrjcek's drums, this
track has a much simpler, but still effective way of relaying the band's dark
message. Electronic samples fade in
and out, augmenting the simple bassist and percussionist's ballad.
The
title track is perhaps the most compositionally varied and accessible on the
album. Continuing the dark,
mournful sense pervading the disc, What You Hide opens with dolorous
lyrics such as "here we are on hollowed ground, resting place of all we
found, all that matters in the here and now, is what we've come to bury."
A guitar solo embedded in a musical bridge ends the track somewhat
abruptly, to the surprise of the listener.
"Riding Low This Time" continues the album on an ironically
upbeat note, as another danceable song, reminiscent of many of the great 80s
new wave bands. "The Sea of
Endless Chances," the album closer, clocks in at 7:40.
The first 5 minutes are the barest found on the album, composed entirely
of Kane's singing and guitar, with the occasional accent of Bernardi's bass.
With 3 minutes left in the song, the drums re-enter along with various
electronic samples. The tempo rises and the layers of instruments build only to
disintegrate in the last 40 seconds and close with the same industrial sounds of
metal on metal that opened the album. Overall, Caligari's "What You Hide" is a beautiful resurrection of the many different sounds of the 80s, mixed with the band's own personal vision for what that decade and genre should be remembered.
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