Weekly Release Spotlight: Vampire Hands
Posted on 3/23/2008
Vampire Hands
Me and You Cherry Red
[Self Released]
While the other "Vampire" band also earned the Weekly Release Spotlight honor not too long ago, this is the band who more rightly deserves to have the mythic creature of the night in their moniker. Darkness, seduction, blood-soaked, and stealthy all describe the local quartet's music perfectly. To create an even more fitting and creepy image, picture the elongated yellow-nailed, powder white digits of an undead hand wrapping slowly around an imminent victim's smooth and ripe throat - this is the eerily hypnotic and frighteningly captivating world of Vampire Hands and their new release Me and You Cherry Red. The band never bites and kills - they don't cater to the average listener's need for flash bang theatrics. For Vampire Hands, the sneaking and the foreplay are the cornerstones to a great art rock sound.
At once deeply ominous and undeniably entertaining, the short 25 jam-packed minutes of primitive psych-horror rock follows 2007's Virgin Dust American Lips with fierce, satisfying results. One might even argue that in only a year, the band has progressed into more textured and expansive territory. Placing percussion at the forefront of their music, both literally on stage with Alex Rose's drumkit and co-singer Colin Johnson's floor tom in the audience's faces and audibly on their latest recording, they have been able to subtly interweave their vocal duels and exchanges and reverbed-to-burning-hell guitars through the percussion rather that strictly underneath it or chaotically alongside it. It also feels more spacious this time around, allowing for numbers like "Cathedral Blues One" to breathe before exploding in slow motion on the subsequent track.
An ambient cacophony of ghostly saxophones also crawl in and out of the album's title track along with electronic keyboard skitters, hinting at an even more mature and experimentally orchestral future for this new pride of the Twin Cities. Admittedly their sound doesn't follow the slam-dunk success model of that other Vampire band, but later down the line, these guys could easily catch fire with their successful combination of tribally mesmerizing rhythms ("Friendship Rd") with a dirty garage ethic ("Safe Word"). What's most refreshing about Vampire Hands, however, is the fact that they manage to do it without ever sounding cute or directly inspired by any one sound. This is the stuff of local lore, not postmodern hype. Here's hoping the future of these pale coffin-dwelling hands follow the legendary path of a Nosferatu or Dracula, not a Corey Feldman movie.
Stream: Vampire Hands - Safe Word
Written by Chris Polley, Radio K volunteer and host of Now Like Photographs.