Damiera - Quiet Mouth Loud Hands

by Simon T Diplock

One of the finest musical rollercoasters of recent years

"Boxes for pop hooks, rock licks and mathy complexity are all ticked with wild abandon here and then the band drive things right off the page. And while these tunes are experimental throughout and genuinely push the envelope in places, Damiera never once forget that they’re supposed to be writing proper, heartfelt songs too."

Projects like this almost never work. Not a supergroup and not quite a vanity project but close enough, since releasing Damiera’s debut, frontman Dave Raymond has kicked all his toys out the pram, kicked everyone out of his band, and recruited a whole new line-up who, we imagine, are far more accepting of his grand ideas. That sort of behaviour, coupled with talk of ‘compositional visions’, bragging about ‘staccato and legato melodies’ and boasts about ‘vocals ranging four octaves’ usually mean an end product that’s vain, smug, self-satisfying, and basically rather shit. But instead, ‘Quiet Mouth Loud Hands’ is absolutely incredible.

It’s not quite out of nowhere, that debut, ‘M(U)SIC’, was great as well, but this thing is on a whole other level. Where ‘M(US)IC’ could be easily explained by listing a whole heap of similar acts- like labelmates Circa Survive and The Fall Of Troy- that just won’t do here. Ok, so the title track is all at once massive and minutely detailed, sounding like an art-rock James Bond theme, ‘Teacher, Preacher’ makes like Coheed And Cambria covering some lost Michael Jackson classic, and ‘Trading Grins’ could have come off Justin Timberlake’s epic ‘FutureSex/LoveSounds’ opus, but other sounds utterly defy comparison. In fact ‘Quiet Mouth…’ covers so much ground over its 11 tracks that it’s easy to see how other, normal musicians might not have been able to keep up.

Boxes for pop hooks, rock licks and mathy complexity are all ticked with wild abandon and then Raymond drives things right off the page. And while these technical, eccentric, and powerful tunes are the work of a certified self-centred muso- experimental throughout and genuinely pushing the envelope in places- Damiera never once forget that they’re supposed to be writing songs, catchy, hook-laden monsters of songs. Hell, if you don’t find something to like here then you’re just not listening hard enough.

There are so many layers here that you could spend the rest of the year in a room with ‘Quiet Mouth…’ and still not unravel all of its secrets. And while that means that some former fans will disregard this record, abandoning it for being too difficult, too big to fit neatly into a handy pigeonhole, those that stick with it are in for one of the finest musical rollercoasters of recent years. Incredible stuff.

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