ALBUM REVIEW: Vital – Big | Brave

The story of Montreal’s BIG | BRAVE has so far been characterised by chance. Having set out to experiment with ambient and folk music, they happened upon their distinctive sound when a broken acoustic guitar led Robin Wattie to pick up an electric guitar and amplifier instead; the contrast of power and fragility has become their defining feature ever since.

They got their break opening for THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA and, having caught the ear of helmsman Efrim Manuel Menuck, were invited to open for GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR as well. They would record their second and defining record Au De La with Menuck, and were fortunate enough to have attracted the attention of Southern Lord himself Greg Anderson, who gave the project a home on his roster in 2015. From then on they have made their own luck, and proved themselves to be prolific artists. Ardor followed in 2017, and A Gaze Among Them in 2019, as the band took off on North American and European tours. As the project goes from strength to strength, they will release Vital as their fifth full-length today via Southern Lord.

While the project is innovative in and of itself (no one sounds quite like BIG | BRAVE) their progression has been one of refinement and elaboration, rather than radical experimentation. Au De La was visceral and noisy, Ardor was dark and expansive, and A Gaze Among Them was dreamier and lighter, but their exploration centres around a core sound: guitar drones and tidal chords structured around a primitive but relentless percussive rhythm, and lent a melodic nuance with some superb vocal expression, which ranges from the sweet and tender to the strained and terrifying. Vital‘s opening pair are an affirmation of this essential sound without extraneous features, combining the saturated wall-of-sound of SUNN O))) with the rhythmic, no-wave minimalism of SWANS.

Half Breed is characterised by a distinct vulnerability in Wattie’s voice, which renders palpable the importance of the words quoted from Alexander Chee‘s How to Write An Autobiographical Novel:

“… [The] pattern for the history of half-breeds hidden in every culture; historically we are allowed neither the privileges of the ruling class nor the community of those who are ruled. To each side that disowns us, we represent everything the other does not have. We survive only if we are valued, and we are valued only for strength, or beauty, sometimes for intelligence or cunning.”

“Once it came time to help write this album,” writes Wattie, “I found that, what better way absorb these words than through the sensations of the vibrations of sound.”  The song stands as the centrepiece of an album which explores the vicissitudes of flesh and identity in more abstract terms, and grounds those themes with an emphatic finesse. Wited. Still And All… provides opportunity for reflection as a formless, ambient piece before the momentum is regained in second single Of This Ilk. The juxtaposition of sonorous drone and vigorous rhythm creates an uneasy experience, which is at once greatly affecting and highly dissociative. The trio are able to create a vast sense of space with minimal instrumentation and arrangement, which resounding swansong Vital captures succinctly.

BIG | BRAVE reorient themselves towards their core sound on Vital. This is their most personal record to date, exploring the duality of flesh and identity with sonorous aplomb. The idea is simple, but the effect is compelling: the Montreal trio combine the seismic weight of drone with the visceral urgency of hardcore, producing massive tidal chords which decay into washes of feedback and noise. This is a careful elaboration and meticulous refinement of BIG | BRAVE’s musical essence, which speaks with a newfound candour.

Rating: 8/10

Vital is set for release on April 23rd via Southern Lord. 

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