When the David Lynch-directed movie The Straight Story was released in 1999 it was a surprising departure for anyone familiar with the creator of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. The surprise wasn’t floating aliens, ladies in radiators or ears in paper bags. Quite the opposite. Lynch had already exposed audiences to the dark and bizarre in many forms; it was the absence of surrealistic shock that made the poignancy of one man’s single-minded road trip to reconnect with his ill brother so strange. This was not what was expected. This was not the formula that audiences were starting to think they’d figured out.
Roughly thirty years into their recording career, Oxbow’s four-man unit of Dan Adams (electric, acoustic basses), Greg Davis (drums, percussion), Eugene S. Robinson (vocals) and Niko Wenner (guitars, pianos) had given listeners seven studio albums’ worth of angular, noisy, Jazz-infused Art-Rock to formulate some impression of the “Oxbow blueprint”. When the title for album number eight was teased: Love’s Holiday (Ipecac Recordings) it would have been easy to conclude that a noirish portrayal of seduction gone sour and violent fantasies would be the prevailing themes. Past releases like Serenade in Red and Fuckfest certainly supported that prediction. But like David Lynch, Oxbow are not for being pidgeon-holed. Love’s Holiday turned out to be Oxbow letting love into the room.
According to Robinson, the Oxbow catalogue was already full of love songs, listeners just never picked up on it. And who could say they know better? That said, EyeHateGod vocalist Mike IX considers his band’s music to be “Southern Hardcore Blues” — everyone calls them a sludge band all the same. Whatever the artist’s intentions, fans draw their own conclusions. One listen to “1000 Hours” (the first single from Love’s Holiday) leaves no doubt though: this is an Oxbow love song (and you don’t have to dig beneath layers of rage and torment to find it). It’s not a Barry White kind of love, it’s deeply melancholic. Soaked in choral layers, (courtesy of the Love’s Holiday Choir – a recurring feature of the album) Wenner’s subdued guitar lines play off Robinson’s yearning vocal melody, while Adams and Davis hang back, keeping a steady beat.
It’s hard to think of another occasion that you might compare an Oxbow song to an Aerosmith ballad, but that’s how far from the expected we’ve been taken. Producer Joe Chiccarelli (working with the band for the third time following 2007’s Narcotic Story and 2017’s Thin Black Duke) is credited with having encouraged the band to lean into unexpected terrain (which in their case meant not going in the “odd direction”, as Davis puts it). As with those two previous records, Love’s Holiday features all sorts of additional instrumentation like oboe, flute, clarinet, and cello. But aside from the more “straightforward” approach the band often leans into with their playing, it’s the additional vocals on tracks like the mournful, piano-driven “All Gone” (evoking angels trying to rise up from the broken ground) and closer “Gunwale” that give the record its particular identity. Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota), meanwhile, lends her baroque vocal tones to the track “Lovely Murk” (a fitting title, the track giving an impression of foggy clouds passing over ice).
For all the record’s surprising melancholic tenderness, however, this is still Oxbow. As unexpectedly “normal” as Lynch’s The Straight Story was, it was still a story where the protagonist drives 240 miles on a lawnmower. In the case of Love’s Holiday, Adams, Davis, Robinson, and Wenner are ultimately the lawnmower (although given the recurring nautical themes in Robinson’s lyrics here, a boat would be a more fitting representation). As “straight” as they play, Oxbow are never going to be a typical or average band. While Wenner has primarily dispensed with his prior propensity for open guitar tunings, his fluid, angular playing is unmistakable. He never overplays, having a knack for finding little melodic nuances, whether it’s the uneasy “The Night the Room Started Burning” or the Jeff Buckley/Chris Cornell reminiscent progressions of “Million Dollar Weekend”.
Likewise, for all the sonic space occupied by the album’s lush production and additional vocal contributions, Robinson remains a scene-stealing frontman — whether with his hushed, weary mutterings of “All Gone” or wild screams on “The Second Talk”. And while Adams and Davis never grasp for attention with flashy playing they remain a calm, collected powerhouse of a rhythm section, adding poise and groove to tracks like hard-rocking opener “Dead Ahead” and “The Second Talk” with its fiery interplay between Robinson’s vocals and Wenner’s slide guitar.
As Robinson delivers more nautical imagery on the album’s final track, the heavy drone and crashing guitar chords and Love’s Holiday Choir of “Gunwale” make for a fitting soundtrack to the roll of end credits. Should it be a boat slowly coming to shore, or a flaming Viking ship carrying its dead warriors off to the afterlife?
Reflecting on Love’s Holiday, bassist Adams considers the challenge of working “directly within a musical palette used for some spectacular, much inconsequential, and quite a bit of terrible music and production. We can try to channel the true great creations and have the great freedom to flounder and sink in a much, much deeper sea.” However, deep the water gets, the good ship Oxbow never sinks for long.
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8 / 10
TOM OSMAN