Description
Red vinyl with 4 page lyric booklet
Tracy Wilson’s old band, Dahlia Seed, had a hard but melodic instrumentation that mixed so well with Tracy’s sweet and fiery vocals. Dahlia Seed broke up in 1996 and it all became rather quiet around Tracy Wilson. In 2007 a cdR album was released with her new band Ringfinger. An album that would be released as a vinyl edition the year after. Tracy Wilson also made a press release that explained her stretch of heartache and trauma, it seemed clear that Decimal had been the record that saved her life. Let’s face it—anything that has this kind of weight riding on it is scary. How can you place judgment on another person’s pain? But what if the therapeutic process of making a record to save yourself doesn’t translate? I guess, in the end, I came out feeling a little bit of both, that it did and didn’t transpose. A few listens later, as the record started to sink in, a tinge of “excited” ran through me as Wilson belted out, “What am I doing, missing a stranger?” Catchy melodies like this continue to decorate the record along with secretly trippy sounds and depressing undertones. It’s clear this is the same Tracy from the Dahlia Seed days, only she’s swapped a bit of her badass edginess for a sadder, wimpier model. Her voice is still lovely—you can certainly tell—but her whispery, cat-like cries left me a bit nostalgic for some of that strong, independent bite that made me idolize her in the first place. The record definitely has its ups and downs. And sometimes, I’m sorry to say, she just gets it all wrong, like on “Landing Strip,” where she moans, “You are a spoon/I am a mouth, so feed me.” This brings to mind the image of that creepy plant from Little Shop of Horrors, which pretty much speaks for itself. There are more tracks here that doesnt suite my taste but thats also songs I really liked. Stephen Brodsky became a new favourite with his catchy, quirky “Pin Me Down,” the only song not sung by Tracy and also featuring his brother on drums in their debut performance as a duo. His sing-song, rhyme melodies brightened up the whole record, despite their lyrical downer-ness, “She tries to pin me down just like a hand me down/She tried to pin me down, but I came undone by design.” The slinky “aahs” and sighs in the background give it an old-timey quality I can never resist. On “Four Misused Letters,” Cam DiNunzio’s soothing voice joins Tracy’s breathy vocals, and together they sing you to sleep with their lullaby sounds. What they’re singing about (the title gives it away) sounds like true heartbreak, but with the two of them together by your side, you can be sure you’ll sleep like a baby and dream of lambs and tea parties no matter what they’re saying. And it was the titillating sound of “Elegant Excuse” where I imagined a choir swaying from side to side, stomping their feet and clapping their hands to the background “oohs,” the click-clacking of the drums, and the tweaking sound of guitar while it crawled alongside the vocals, building up like a cliffhanger in a novel and bursting out into the fierce sound of tinny magic. Overall, this is not as hard as Dahlia Seed but it still has that familiar feeling to the record. Its a trip-hop, ambient, drone, experimental, mellow-electronic, Black Box Recorder meets Tracy And The Plastics (and occasionally bumps into Bjork) kind of way. Sometimes it gives you the feeling that you should be listening to this all alone in a dark attic with only candlelight. But maybe this romantic bleakness is part of the charm, eh?
Track list:
1. Typewriter Tourist
2. Waving Goodbye
3. Joy Lingers
4. Viking Funeral
5. Landing Strip
6. Pin Me Down
7. Miss Me
8. Elegant Excuse
9. AWOL W/ Adore
10. Mining For Diamonds
11. Four Misused Letters
12. Death Star