Doleful
Lions - Out Like A
Lamb
Fourth album from this much adored
trio fronted by the literate mind and distinct voice of Jonathan
Scott, who splits his time between his home in Chicago and his
bandmates in Chapel Hill. Iridescent guitar pop with a graphic-novel
twist, the song titles tell the story: "Dear
Lazarus", "Graveyards of Swallows", "When We Were
Wolves", and "Stand In the Colosseum". Songs invested with both
saucy home-recorded intimacies and their new digital studio's epic production
values… From the springtime in bloom balm of "Saturday
Mansions", the Freemasonic acoustic lilt of "1723", the anthem
to the closest star "Sunshine Spartacus" to the psychedelic samba of "I
Can Take You To The Sun", we hope that folks enjoy this as much as the band
obviously enjoyed making it.
How does a melodic pop band grow to become one of independent music's most distinct
voices? To fully appreciate Doleful Lions' new album, Out Like A Lamb, one must
understand the journey of the band has taken through wondrous lands filled with
fantastic characters, and where as in all fairy tales our heroes find their true
voice. This is a story of a band's development that, in a just world, would take
them from shoebox to household name in five years. "And when Neu! make a
noise, it sounds just like the Beach Boys" (Doleful Lions "The Sound
Of Cologne") When sifting through a shoebox full of demo tapes in 1997,
we popped on a cassette marked "Doleful Lions" into the Parasol tape
deck and our jaws promptly hit the ground. We immediately contacted Jonathan
who was in the process of moving from Chicago to Chapel Hill about releasing
his record. Upon arriving in Chapel Hill he quickly assembled a band and recorded
the resulting debut, Motel Swim (1998), with Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey. The
album met with uniform praise from the pop community struck by its melodic, melancholic
sounds recalling the heyday of the 80s Southeastern pop school led by both Easter
and Stamey back in the day. "A form of joyful noise that recalls the spirit
of early rock and roll and incorporates influences from some of the best bands
since" (Pop Matters) Motel Swim was largely a straight-ahead pop record
which showcased songs with a darker side and which hinted at the changes soon
to come to the band. The album opener "The Sound Of Cologne" made it
evident that Jonathan appreciated pop
distilled by atypical influences ("And when Neu! make a noise/They sound
just like The Beach Boys"). It was on their next album that the Doleful
Lions embraced these influences and took a sharp turn from their debut. It's
here that the band truly began to find its own voice. "Prodigiously smart,
criminally catchy indie-pop" (Gear Magazine) Gone was the strict guitar-bass-drums
line-up from Motel Swim, heck, the whole Doleful Lions backing band were gone
replaced by new players including creative foil Dave Jackson. Jonathan immersed
the Doleful Lions in a spacious world of sound now adding keyboards, drum programming,
and lots of extraneous sounds, but most notably, The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves
Are Here! (1999) revealed
Jonathan's new found lyrical focus. Songs like "Sweet Driller
Killer," "Destroy All Monsters," and the stunning title track
invented new worlds as backdrops for songs…
As Jonathan earnestly sings with straight face and full voice of demons and the
end of the world ("And now I see lamb's blood on your door/We both know
that it can't save us now/The Sunday morning star is on the rise/I can't see
the longing in your eyes/That's okay my sweetheart cause I love you/I wanted
to be the one in the end/And though my blood is spilling around you/I could be
your friend/So, don't even cry the rats are coming/The werewolves are
here") listeners find that these are actually not horror tales, but poignant
love songs cloaked in fantastic tales. "Sixties revisited by modern-day
spacers. This is what The Beach Boys' 20/20 might have sounded like if you heard
it under sedation, from down a corridor, with the pitter-patter of light drizzle
in the background…" (Uncut Magazine) On 2000's Song Cyclops, Volume
One, Jonathan's obsession with B-movie baddies continued to boil over with Parasol
releasing the first of two intended volumes collecting Jonathan's home demos.
The 22 tracks about the likes of Sasquatch, witches, and ghouls again served
as allegorical tales of psychological angst and tormented love and critics responded
with wide-spread praise. A roving horde of flesh eating zombies never garnered
so many worthy accolades! "A beautifully bizarre indie-rock Narnia that
dead-rings a lost Radiohead soundtrack to Dungeons and Dragons. One of the most
original albums of the year" (Gear Magazine) The stage had been set. Doleful
Lions had proven to excel at crafting tiny epics and twisting universal themes.
Their fan base was growing. The critics' were listening. And the time was at
hand for Doleful Lions to do something really special. With their 4th album the
band now offer what may prove to be their crowning achievement. Out Like A Lamb
successfully collects all of the best pieces that have made Doleful Lions such
a compelling listen from the start. The steady hum of guitars is offset by extraneous
noise. Otherworldly sounds and aural vistas are grounded by melody and an uncommonly
great voice. Beach Boys derived harmony coalesces with spacious musical skies.
Jonathan's head is in the clouds, but his feet are feet on the ground as he delivers
heartbreaking tales in his most intimate voice yet. His mythical and historical
beings are juxtaposed by plainly, but poetically told tales
stretching from "Sunshine Spartacus" and "Dear Lazarus" to
the heartrending goodbye "Texas Is Beautiful". "On the wings of
my leaving, this feeling is the sound, of a billion stars" (Doleful Lions "Out
Like A Lamb") Jonathan has pared the band down to a comfortable trio. Dave
Jackson returns with his collection of vintage contraptions and exceptional recording
technique. Aynsley Pirtle resurfaces as a full band member, playing a much larger
role by singing lead on a number of songs and adding her vocal sweetness to others.
The songwriting, recording and production work are gorgeous and illustrate that
the singer who once professed his love for both The Beach Boys and Neu! has now
found a means of meshing these elements in music rather in mere words. Unifying
these disparate devices, themes, and styles proves to be the Out Like A Lamb's
greatest strength offering both sides of the coin to a musical dichotomy in only
a way that a doleful lion could. Listen to Out Like A Lamb and envision faraway
lands over distant horizons and hear the sound of dreams. Meet heroes who are
fragile, heroes that are strong, and heroes that are searching for love. Heroes
like the
Doleful Lions. Heroes like you and me.
"Doleful Lions make a rather gorgeous whisper of sound; guitars picking out starlight
bathed in swathes of keyboards; a rolling distant thunder of drums and voices
that tiptoe through quarried shards of slate. It’s vaguely psychedelic,
where thankfully the psychedelia is more the gentle thrill of Sagittarius than,
say, the electric overdose and histrionics of a Hendrix or Cream. This is rock
that doesn’t rock at all, but sways, lost in summer breezes and the mythology
of Smile bootlegs. (The best line here
is 'Don’t you know it was the government that stopped The Beach Boys
from releasing Smile?') Definitely one to offer up its treasures
with repeated plays, Out Like A Lamb is the kind of record from
which obsessions spring." - Careless Talk Costs Lives UK
Click here to read a great interview from the band's UK label, Broken Horse Records.
“…Songs that start out as instantly catchy indie pop to blossom into soaring
art pieces of almost baroque melodic invention and harmonic complexity, while
never becoming anything less than utterly accessible. Flavors range from, country
by way of Morricone, to full-on psychedelia, holy folk rock, and more; but it
will all lift you up and warm your world upon the first listening. Harmonies
that recall Simon & Garfunkel, Belle And Sebastian, Damon & Naomi, Kings of Convenience,
and the Beach Boys… There's something almost too good to be true about how
fine this album is, or maybe it's just a dream come true.” - Dream Magazine
UK
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"Out Like A Lamb is a gem of neo-psychedelic orch-pop, with chiming guitars and
close vocal harmonies. The sound of dreams" - Uncut Magazine UK
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"Works like the velvety "Saturday Mansions," psychedelic "I Can Take You To The
Sun," subtle "Dear Lazarus" & wailing "Tanah Lot" establishes Out As A Lamb the cutting
edge masterpiece that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot never was."- Power of Pop
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from All Music Guide:
After the genial but largely forgettable guitar pop of 1998's Motel Swim, Chapel
Hill's Doleful Lions turned downright freaky. 1999's The Rats Are Coming! The
Werewolves Are Here! showcased singer/songwriter Jonathan Scott's growing fascination
with horror films and the paranormal, as well as an increased fondness for '70s
Krautrock and other progressive music forms; 2000's Song Cyclops, Vol. 1 was
even weirder, a mostly acoustic set recorded by Scott on his own that approaches
Roky Erickson territory in its obsession with demons and monsters. 2002's Out
Like a Lamb returns to the full-band format and ratchets down the lyrical weirdness
a notch or two, with wondrous results. Their most layered and richest-sounding
album, Out Like a Lamb synthesizes the starkness of Song Cyclops with the sound-for-sound's-sake
neo-psychedelia of The Rats Are Coming, resulting in songs like "Surfside Motel," which
builds slowly from a simple acoustic guitar and vocal into a mixture of Phil
Spector-like tympani rolls and Neu!-style synthesizer drones, or "Dear Lazarus," which
recalls the acoustic songs on The Beatles [White Album]. The songs are still
on the odd side — "1723" is a stirring, almost martial waltz about the founding
of freemasonry, and the title track is filled with bizarre extraneous noises
underneath an otherwise lilting pop song — but Out Like a Lamb is an inviting
and often fascinating album.
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