Claire Denis’ 2018 film High Life saw humankind colonise space with its darkest and most self-interested impulses. The film juggled tenderness and brutality, hope and nihilism—a curious tone which extended into its minimal score, courtesy of Tindersticks alumnus Stuart A. Staples. There is some shared DNA between Staples’ work and the latest collaborative LP from Benjamin Finger and James Plotkin, We Carry the Curse. Both are stargazing music—but they divide their attention between the stars’ brilliance and what Robert Frost once called the “empty spaces” in between.
Black is a yielding, vacuous colour. Many fear the dark because this vacuity accommodates pre-existing fears—if you are terrified of spiders, your imagination may infest a dark space with them. Our minds wander freely before sleep, because in the unobserved darkness of night we need fear no judgement. Music can be the same way—and with We Carry the Curse, vacuity and darkness allow a depth of contemplation that more active forms may not. The album relishes in stillness, cavernousness, and dark mystification. One listener may find the album deeply strange or disconcerting—another may just as easily find hope, clarity and relaxation.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see a huge wave of younger listeners soon turn towards gestural music like We Carry the Curse. A generation seeking self-actualisation may find comfort in art which doesn’t tell you the right or wrong way to think. Not only can you luxuriate in its formal beauty, you are afforded space to undergo your own spiritual/emotional/intellectual journey—rather than be dictated to by more traditional songwriting, often as confused in its affiliations as it is vocal.
There is more than a passing resemblance between We Carry the Curse and A Silver Mt. Zion’s 2000 album He Has Left Us Alone…. Finger and Plotkin’s title track, in particular, evokes the spirit of Efrim & co. with its wounded strings, funereal plod and crunchy guitar drones. We Carry the Curse gets similar mileage from its tension as A Silver Mt. Zion’s work; restless, refusing to boil over but refusing to slow its simmer. Both artists allow the analogue and electric to collide in an uncomfortable clash—generating a spectral bridging effect between the past and the present. It is as though the bows and strings of dead players are calling from the grave. Albeit terrestrial this time, rather than in the far-flung reaches of space, ghosts represent the same vacuum—unseen, and of indeterminable morality. The title We Carry the Curse is really a question in disguise. Into what empty spaces are we carrying it?
We Carry the Curse is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe