It’s October, 2009, and there’s a new album out by The Black Heart Procession.  It’s called Six, and I swear that when I started writing this review I had nothing but positive feelings towards everyone responsible.  Wikipedia tells me that Six is “long-awaited,” which seemed reasonable considering that the San Diego band’s last album dropped 3 long years ago.  It’s entirely possible that The Black Heart Procession has fans who await each new release with baited breath, though I’ve never been one of them.  Instead, I was drawn in by the quality of a great single, Rats, when browsing through albums coming out next week (October 6, specifically).  I thought that a post on Six might also be a nice shift from last week’s post on Broadcast, in that it would highlight a band that continues to rock and craft legitimate, hooky singles, rather than one that’s slowly evolved in an increasingly (possibly over-) academic direction.  I want to write a “Fiery Furnaces, I’m looking at you here” parenthetical but don’t know where in the last sentence it might belong–readers?

Having listened now to Six in full, I wish I’d left things at being wowed by the single (posted below if you want to skip down to the mp3s).  Like Health, The Black Heart Procession has crafted one dark, strangely sexy track that features a rubbery, top-of-the-mix bass line; they sit back and let it convert new fans.  Rats sounds vaguely like something Six Finger Satellite or Girls Against Boys might have recorded in their prime (the latter, possibly, as New Wet Kojak) and it leaves the rest of the album in the dust.   As you might guess, Rats is currently the only song streaming on the band’s website and available for (legal) download. 

How about the other 12 tracks on Six?  Frankly, the rest of the album sounds about as tired as those two dudes look in the picture at right.  Not to sound overly mean, but if you’re picking up a Burning Man vibe from these guys’ fashion sense, there’s plenty to support that judgement in their music as well.  I’ve never exactly thought of The Black Heart Procession as a subtle band–with their name, how subtle can they be–but my memory was that the group embraces at least an original form of doom and gloom: the multi-instrumental, Rain-Dog-Era Tom Waits sea shanty, coupled with a cinematic sense of story, like a fresher, less melodramatic Pinetop Seven (who I admit to having adored when their albums first came out on Truckstop).  By careful editing, my Ipod prior to last week contained only two Black Heart Procession songs: A Heart Like Mine and It’s a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds In Your Eyes, two piano-driven tearjerkers of steampunk regret from the band’s albums 3 (released 2000) and 2 (released 1999), respectively.  Please let me never again find occasion to write the phrase “piano-driven tearjerkers of steampunk regret.”

What do the songs aside from Rats sound like on Six?  Sadly, some sort of early, bludgeon-you-over-the-head-with-the-concept Calexico, informed by the world-weary vocals and Springsteen-y laments of the Walkmen.  I suppose this might make some sense given that Calexico and The Black Heart Procession shared a label prior to Touch and Go’s implosion early this year.  Lots of lyrics about journeys to hell in a whiskey bottle while doing drugs with a devil (who I imagine to vaguely resemble Nick Cave at his most pretentious) and, from the sound of things, taking in a medieval circus along the way.  “I’m not leaving til I tear out your heart/I’m not leaving til the devil is dead”?  While a Hammond organ plays in the background?  No thank you.  I’m posting a link to the catchiest of the non-Rats tracks, Forget My Heart, below.  You can totally tap your toes to if you can are able to dissasociate the hook from that terrible Fastball song about two annoying people going on a life journey.

Seriously, after all of the above, please do enjoy the tracks below, because with the kinda-exception of Forget My Heart, they are great singles that should be treated as punchy, one-two highlights for times when you don’t feel like settling in with something like that last Broadcast album.

–guten MORGAN

• A Heart Like MineA Heart Like Mine
• It’s a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds In Your EyesIt’s a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds In Your Eyes
• Forget My HeartForget My Heart
• RatsRats