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Hood:
Outside Closer
Apparently Hood, a four-piece from Leeds, has been making their intricately styled brand of music for quite awhile nowalmost fifteen years. This is the first time I remember hearing them, but opener The Negatives is certainly a good track to catch your attention. Its not an easy song to describe, but the clear vocals drift over a very warm musical track that has strings galore and a slow sort of beat that emphasizes the lyrics well. It seems that Hood enjoys writing about nature and how it inspires them, but there is plenty of room to sneak in some cynicism with lines like There isnt any space for love anymore, and if you know the feeling then you need to go to the furthest place from your houseand watch the birds fly by, just like the first time. The line sounds much better in the context of the song, partly because the vocals are so haunting. The singers voice reminds me of this weird Le Grande Magistery artist called Mr. Wright who always had a way of catching my attention. Other tracks tread different ground as we hear everything from late-era Radiohead electronic noises to calmer acoustic pieces like End of One Train Working. The slow beat percussion almost sounds like handclaps at times. In fact the mood on Outside Closer comes pretty close to Diamond Dogs era Bowie, specifically the eerie tracks from that like We Are the Dead. Winter 72 has some squeaky guitar noise in it, but the one thing that holds the album together with all these sounds is the warm yet hazy vocals that are still somehow clear and easy to understand. Songs like Closure prove that Hood provides far more atmosphere than most bands I can think of, and I hate to bring up Radiohead again, but Hood shares a mature tendency to experiment that just reminds me of an album like Hail to the Thief. This is certainly a release worth keeping your eyes out for.
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