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"Boxing Vapours" Review by Andrew Eley
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There is no easy way to classify or approach Boxing Vapours, and at most one needs to proceed with caution and understand the album on its own terms. Like that once-wayward teenager from Texas who mumbled through forty-five albums, it does not suffice to reduce Boxing Vapours to a list of comparable records. What they have succeeded in doing is not merely to rehash or recreate some older and more reliable form (e.g. blues or soul,) but come into their own and found a way to articulate and communicate what it is that the Soul says and cries out for. This is, in part, brought through by Mark Trecka, whose rich voice I can only refer to as holy.
I have been composing an essay on this album for roughly seven or eight months. Each time I sit down to describe the sounds coming from the speakers, I find myself moved in a new way.
"A Dream of Avalon" is composed in blues form, but it is my conviction that this wasn't necessarily a conscious decision: that the blues form did not just happen to be the most convenient vehicle for the song. It is the lack of faith in these forms [see "Pangea Blues"] that finds Boxing Vapours in such idiosyncratic territory. Reputable, convenient and standard forms of composition lend themselves as well to certain genres of music as to literature or other assorted arts. You can't sell pottery with a deliberate crack in its clay. More often than not, the convenience of these forms make the marketing and distribution of the art easier, as well as their ultimate examination. One would rather find themselves saying, "Yes, this is a pop song," when the other option involves more scrutiny and study. When cornered with something that defies a superficial classification, proper examination and appreciation comes from understanding the thing on its own terms. It can be difficult, but rewarding. This is why you will never hear Boxing Vapours.
It is as though the songs are creating themselves and are only using the the group as a vehicle for their own ends. I believe that spirits are coming through Static Films and not the other way around. I suspect that the band might agree. These songs must be heard and they will be heard.
My attention continually moves to the centerpiece of the record, the diminuitively-entitled "Sheep Ranch." The song is not so much a song as it is a very dangerous place -a location within- full of moral uncertainty and intense conviction, on par (not in the least) with Neil Young's "A Man Needs a Maid,"and "O My Lord" of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, or Leonard Cohen and his "Teachers."
And on either side of "Sheep Ranch," you respectively have "Beach Grass" and the track "Boxing Vapours" itself. The three, under the skillful hand of producer/bass player/drummer Evan Hydzik, form a suite more than anything else. And while "Beach Grass," for all appearences, emerges as something resembling the more conservative Static Films compositions, there is no shaking the lyric's underlying sense of impermanence. And that it segues into "Sheep Ranch" is no coincidence. The price of the tame "pop" song must be paid by way of penance: there is no choice without consequence.
This in no way means that one should ignore the other tracks. You can try to ignore them, but they will come back and haunt you; At odd moments, at work, while sleeping, while reading Rainer Maria Rilke. The curse of this record is that it sticks to you and begs and demands your attention. You could put Boxing Vapours underneath your stack of favorite records, but it will not let you give up so easily without putting up a fight. The challenging minimalism of "Wedding," for example, or the sparse "Gird Up Your Loins, Pilgrims," or both elements brought to fruition in the soft and bewildering denouement of "Soon We Will Marry Our Ghosts and There Will Be No Resolution," (which ironically or symbolically closes the album).
