Search - Of the Opera :: Study Natural Law

An Impressive Debut Album

The Smoking Pen | UK | 10/06/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I have a general rule of thumb where music is concerned: If there are at least four good songs on a CD, I reckon it's usually worth the average price of $13.00 (U.S. currency)...which, if you're keeping count, comes out to be $3.25 apiece. Of course, if your cash is tight, you can always collect those four songs you like at the iTunes on-line shop for a sweet $3.96 total...but then you won't get that cool insert booklet with all those lyrics that went by too fast on the CD for you to be able to catch every word and all those touched-up photos of queer images that basically have nothing to do with the music but have enough of the grue to pish your mums and dads off, not to mention the requisite (though probably completely useless) band info. And if you're anything like me, in just about three or four months down the line you'll hear one of those songs that had little to no impact on you when you first shuffled through the tracks of the CD under the headphones at any one of those overpriced music shops and kick yourself for not buying (or downloading...legally, of course) the entire album in the first place - inevitably, this will happen only after you've made a complete fool of yourself by telling all your mates about this awesome song you've just heard someplace and how you've got to find out what group it is that recorded it so you can listen to the rest of the songs on their album to see if it's worth shelling out that thirteen quid for...or 9 and 99p at the iTunes shop on line.



All that said, Study Natural law doesn't have four good tracks on it...it has four awesome ones.



The first of these, Track 6, entitled '1909', is a full-on, non-stop - and quite unabashed - love song that unfolds from the first bar with a rapid tempo and urgency that will send your body racing with gooseflesh...particularly as the significance of the song's title begins to settle in and the bittersweet sting of nostalgia descends.



Track 8, 'Bodies Hanging From The Trees', is a breezy flashback to the softer sound of the 70s (before the dark age of disco, that is)...though this gentle tone belies the substance of the song, which is more accurately represented in its lyrics. (Remember that nifty booklet we talked about? Enough said.)



Track 9, 'A Shipwreck On The Great Lakes', comes across with a driving beat that softens just long enough periodically throughout to provide a chilling reflective pause before its final pulsating electronically enhanced denouement.



The final and title Track, 'Study Natural Law' is plainly and simply a marvel of the union between lyrics and music, and though it most likely won't become the radio that '1909' surely is destined to be, its use of various 'unconventional' instruments (most prominently the banjo, which hasn't been put to such appropriate use since the heady days of Belly's masterpiece, 'Star') allows for fair comparison, if only in this singular aspect, to the works of Peter Gabriel and Tom Waits.



To be fair, and completely honest, the only two tracks I've listened to more than once or twice - beyond the aforementioned four, that is -are 'Dearly Departed' and 'Running Of The Bulls'. Does this reflect poorly on the four remaining tracks ('The Buried Chorus', 'Saw It Off Below The Knee', 'Lust Toward Survival', and 'Afraid Of Awakening Late, In 1868')? Don't be so certain. Just remember, I'm the same gadge who didn't cotton to Nirvana's 'Come As You Are' until I'd heard it playing in the background of a video I shot...a couple of years later...and now it's one of my favourites. There is a time for everything. Patience. It will come to you when you're ready.

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