Music Review: School Of Seven Bells, Put Your Sad Down EP

By Less Lee Moore

The only downside to a new School of Seven Bells EP is that I’m in no way tired of Ghostory, their full-length release from February of this year (reviewed here). This is a good problem to have.

Put Your Sad Down opens with the 12-minute-plus title track, which takes a while to build, but has a beautiful payoff, an extremely skillful hybrid of straight-up dance music and SVIIB-style dream pop. It’s what My Bloody Valentine might sound like if they hadn’t broken up after two albums. The lyrics are straightforward and sexy; “Put Your Sad Down” is the rare song that sounds exactly like what the lyrics imply. The song’s intensity eventually tapers off only to dial it up again with an impressive subtlety and finesse.

“Secret Days” (listen here) signals a shift to pre-Ghostory SVIIB, with a heavy drumbeat and decidedly South Asian influence in the music, and a wordless vocalized chorus that’s pure magic. I wish I liked “Faded Heart” more, however. It sounds like a clichéd remix of a superior song that’s buried somewhere inside, although that core does show the anthemic pop sheen of Abba.

The next song, “Lovefingers,” is a cover of the 1968 song by Silver Apples from their 1968 self-titled debut album. Here the original’s psychedelia is replaced with a spooky, Middle Eastern mysticism with wonderful results. The repetitive pulse of “Painting a Memory,” the EP’s final song, nourishes a hypnotic dance beat with more South Asian sounds in Alejandra Deheza’s vocalizations. It also shows that the band sounds best when they give themselves enough time to let the ingredients of their recipes simmer for a while.

Although Put Your Sad Down isn’t as consistently excellent as Ghostory, it is after all an EP and one with an overwhelming ratio of hits to misses. It’s definitely whetted my appetite for the band’s next full-length release, whenever that may be.

Put Your Sad Down is out today from Vagrant and can be ordered from the band’s website.

School Of Seven Bells, Ghostory

By Less Lee Moore

“So fair, yet so cold like a morning of pale Spring still clinging to Winter’s chill.”
—The Two Towers, 2002

Althouth the name of the band is from a “mythical South American school for pickpockets,” School of Seven Bells could just as easily reference singer Alejandra Deheza’s magical vocals. On Ghostory, the band’s latest release, Deheza’s voice is crystalline, like ice fragments melting and freezing, re-melting and re-freezing. From a musical standpoint, too, Ghostory has a much chillier sound than the band’s previous albums. However, it is anything but off-putting. Ghostory is so marvelously seductive that I have listened to nothing else for the past week. I am in love with this album. It is the perfect soundtrack to the spring and perhaps even the rest of 2012.

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The Adventures Of Miss Flitt: Q&A With Designer Beth Hahn

By Chelsea Spear

In the late 2000s, knitwear designer Beth Hahn took the knitting world by storm with her series, The Adventures of Miss Flitt. Blending steampunk-friendly Victorian style, elegant knitwear designs, and an addictive narrative, the series follows the adventures of Emma Flitt as she traverses 19th century Brooklyn to find her sister. Her travels take her to seedy vaudeville theaters, pickpockets’ dens, and—in the most recent edition—to a most spooky séance. Ever the master storyteller, Hahn weaves her story through a series of simple-yet-gorgeous and thoroughly wearable cardigans, berets, overskirts, and other accessories.

On a chilly weekend in early January, I took virtual tea with Beth Hahn to find out more about her knitting endeavors.
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