Vowels - Hooves, Leaves & the Death/As December Nightingales (2012)

Gathering together an earlier EP from '11 titled 'Hooves, Leaves & the Death' with three new songs, this five song thirty three minute recording can be seen as the debut full-length from the Italians in Vowels. But who and what does Vowels do? Well, that's not exactly the easiest subject to report back on. 'Wolves Eating The Sun' begins with a honest melody before a single tremolo picked discordant riff hops in while odd cleanly sung vocals appear alongside. Following the same basic idea for a few minutes the song moves through a few phases of inexplainable weirdness before eventually breaking into more epic ground and then moving through to a final two minutes of dark ambiance and spoken dialogue on this opening twelve minute song.

'Not Unlike A Falling Leaf' furthers the bands need to experiment as it reminds of some of the weirdest aspects of Godspeed you Black Emperor's post rock-whatever genre mixed with a cello, moments of melodic ambiance and random drum bursts that results in a highly atmospheric and avantgarde experience. 'Vespri' is minimalist in style at first, favoring just a cello and piano amongst spoken words, eventually more soundtrack-ish synths enter the song alongside post-rock-ish guitars, while 'At Night' retains a similar calm mood, but offers up some noisier moments near its end. 'Wake' closes out the album on a completely different note, sounding jazzy in its delivery, one can almost picture themselves in a smoky lounge drunk on whiskey while gazing at a gal singing onstage. Vivid, for sure.

This is an interesting and often times challenging release from Vowels, especially since no single song sounds exactly alike, thus making it impossible to categorize properly. Portions of it definitely belong to the post genre, but a lot more of it is simply avantgarde in its delivery, which is good or bad depending on your appreciation for that sort of thing. In any case, it should be interesting to see what these guys come up with next.