Rivulets

by Dan Worth

A quiet riot of noise and emotion

"beneath a façade of cool, calm piano lines and chords played so quietly you can hear the fingers moving over the strings more clearly than the notes there is a raging storm of emotion and words. It’s a sound that is rarely heard because it requires serious talent to pull it off. Rivulets do it masterfully."

There’s an advert that’s been on TV recently in which that actor off No Country For Old Men opines, ‘They say the whisper is louder than the shout.’ It’s a saying that holds a lot of truth. If you whisper, people have to lean in, perhaps turn their head to catch what you’ve said, asking you to repeat yourself, creating a quiet dignity and power around what you say.

Rivulets clearly like this idea as their sound rarely rises above anything other than a quiet, hushed simplicity of guitar and piano. Yet when they do let go the power and emotion is all the greater, through both its shock and its outright quality. The band hail from an area of America where a lake regularly freezes over and there is a sense of frustration borne out of stagnation on their songs, particularly on recently released new album ‘You Are My Home’. Throughout, each song creeps in and then retreats again so quietly that it requires some concentration to mark the transitions and beneath a façade of cool, calm piano lines and chords played so quietly you can hear the fingers moving over the strings more clearly than the notes there is a raging storm of emotion and words.

Take ‘Motioning’ on their new album. It’s six minutes of hushed guitar picking and piano fills, played at phrases slightly off time with the guitar and repeated lyrics ‘come back to me’ that is most easily pigeonholed as a Sigur Ros song you can understand. But there is a power and rhythm to Rivulets that is very much their own that means they can go from this quiet song into even quieter song – ‘Greenhouse’ which is nothing more than three minutes and 27 seconds of barely audible keyboard chords – and it’ll keep you listening intently, almost leaning forwards towards your speakers in case you might miss something.

Penultimate track ‘Happy Ending’ on the new album is a song of simple but devastating beauty that gives you a real insight into the thoughts and feeling of Nathan Amundson, the main thrust of the band since 1999 – ‘there is no happy ending here, I’ll stay and walk away from you, and miss you, and hate the damage I have done…and it goes on, and on, and on…’ while the music builds from slow acoustic guitar to a swirling dramatic crescendo of fuzzy repetitive guitar chords and pounding piano that is reminiscent of Radiohead at their creative peak(s) or more recently Arcade Fire. It’s a sound that is rarely heard because it requires serious talent to pull it off. Rivulets do it masterfully.

If you like your music raw, complicated, and intelligent and that reveals more about itself the more you explore then this is for you. The whisper is indeed louder than the shout.

Be the first to comment on this article