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Seattle's Tagging Satellites favor the subtle over the obvious, the discreet
over the bombastic. The result is a grounded record- one content to win
you over with tenderness rather than aggression.
"Perfect Dream" and "Church on Sunday" erupt from
quiet, static ambience into vicious, bitter distorted swirls of fury and
noise. Lead singer Zera Marvel does her best PJ Harvey, spitting out words
in a voracious piss of emotion.
On the tracks "Circles", "Glow", and "Break and
Dive", Tagging Satellites weave an intricate, moody texture of guitars,
keys, strings, and dreamy vocals. The opener "Circles" begins
with a simple, arpegiated guitar line before a dizzy keyboard wobble dances
around the melody, held together by Shea Bliss' simple, understated drum
line. Whereas on the noise tracks Marvel was vicious and animalistic,
on these softer songs she is languorous and lazy, softly crooning the
chorusŐs simple hook, "You...go down, You...go down."
A subtle, mesmerizing track, "Glow" stops midway, leaving guitarist/producer
Graig Markel's clean electric guitar and low, grumbling cello to gently,
sleepily escalate to a superbly understated climax.
These quiet keyboard-guitar vignettes are amazingly well-crafted, masterfully
produced, and exude a calm air of true, simple musical expertise and style.
-Nicholas
Taylor, Pop Matters
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for
one night falls
Dreamy
Female Pop Confessions: It's often misleading to judge an album by it's
cover, but in Tagging Satellites' case it's well worth it. From first
glance at the handmade artwork, you are faced with a black and gray nightscape
with a hand-cut gate forcing you to question whether you are even welcome.
Open it up and find one of many unique photos to come with the airbrushed
inlay.
On their third full-length release, songstress Zera Marvel shows her worth
as a front-woman crafting her elegant P.J. Harvey cum Kristin Hersh croon.
With the assistance of Graig Markel (ex-New Sweet Breath) to help in the
creation of the music, One Night Falls takes on the grace of the spookier
Cranes songs.
Haunting secrets like "I miss everyone I have kissed" from "Memory
Wire" complete with cello accompaniment really garner the album repeat
visits. "DeHavilland Comet," and "Valentino" are certainly
the strongest tracks on the album with their well crafted, almost pop
appeal to them. "A Better Way" brings the tempo back up a touch
with the neatly plucked acoustic leading the way. With the grace of Zera's
voice and the rest of the band's ability to seemingly appear when needed,
you'll find yourself with the perfect soundtrack to a fading horizon.
Tagging Satellites do a wonderful job combining Seattle's dreariness into
the influences of the British shoegazing pioneers.
-
Outburn Magazine, Skippy Longstocking
Satellites
orbit around a Marvel-ous world
12/13/02
SCOTT D. LEWIS
It's
fitting that this third full-length CD from Seattle's Tagging Satellites
opens with a sparse, icy soundscape and a babbling, chilling lullaby from
vocalist Zera Marvel.
Tagging Satellites' world is painted with swaths of fuzzy guitars, sprightly
yet sedate rhythms, twinkling keyboard strokes, sighing strings and Marvel's
washed-out coos. It's a place that is sweet and scary, seductive and spooky,
a world where the Cocteau Twins, Swans, Slowdive, Dead Can Dance, This
Mortal Coil and the entire stable of bands from the 4AD label would feel
right at home.
Though many of the defining elements are present, it would be wrong to
consider Tagging Satellites a "shoe-gazer" band. Sure, there's the reliance
on layers and layers of swirling guitar and the sense that the whole sound
has been sprinkled with pixie dust. But the slightly abrasive and aloof
nature of such groups as My Bloody Valentine is missing.
Then there's Marvel's voice -- as wispy and elusive as Hope Sandoval's
but possessing some of Kendra Smith's wearied mystique -- which sweeps
alongside the music and delicately wraps itself around the notes.
No, the members of Tagging Satellites aren't looking down at their feet,
detached and discontent, they're staring up at the sky, eyes wide open
and filled with wonder.
Star-gazers?
While there's not much variation in the 10 tracks on "One Night Falls,"
that's not really a criticism; subtle shifts in tone keep the album rolling
along, avoiding redundancy.
"deHavilland Comet" twinkles to life with delicate, crystalline guitar
notes before jumping into power-pop chords and swooping strings. Marvel's
voice makes the transformation, too, switching from angelic to spectral.
"Memory Wire" barely makes it out of first gear, but the pretty ambient
drone and Cranes-styled singing is hypnotic and lovely.
The following "A Better Way" finds Tagging Satellites at its most symphonic
and sculptural. While the instrumental areas are swollen with crashing
and pureed sound, the vocal sections are a study in crafted subtlety and
restraint.
"Red Fence" sounds like Mazzy Star with a string section. The single instrumental,
"Unknown," shows the band's epic rock side, and the closer, "Starfire
13," is the perfect track to send you into smiling slumber.
Tagging
Satellites serve up their version of new American Gothic, an odd mixture
of dreamy rock, poppy sensibility, alt-country psychedelia, and a hint
of creepiness. The somber lyrics of singer Zera Marvel are delivered in
a style somewhere between a more medicated, less bitchy Courtney Love
and a less brooding Kendra Smith.
The music is reminiscent of David Roback, who with Smith played as Opal,
and later went on to back Hope Sandoval in the now dormant Mazzy Star.
There are symphonic touches in the production of "deHavilland Comet",
"Memory Wire", "Sky", and "Starfire 13", smoothing out the sleep induced
dopamine chronicles.
-
David Parish, Slug Magazine
For
quite some time, pop fans have been sleeping with a night-light on, or
the hallway lamp left burning and a door left cracked open. With sunshiny
melodies dominating nearly every facet of the underground pop world, from
power pop to jangle and twee to psychedelic and the new Merseybeats, there's
nary a shadow, let alone a pool of darkness, in which semi-vampiric types
can creep away from the rays of the sun.
Whatever happened to the days of tarantula pop and the Sisters' videos
on MTV? Has caked-on eyeliner and black lipstick, Hot Topics and the rise
of baby goths schooled by Marilyn Manson killed off all hope of respectable
darkness? Not quite yet, they haven't.
While Tagging Satellites isn't quite as wrapped up in the world of moon
shadows, smoky night air and the combination of deliberate back-beats
and metallic guitars that are associated with goth bands, the Seattle
outfit is more than just a few shades darker than most of its pop brethren.
Droning guitars, minor-key melodies, wraith-like keyboards and the deadpan
delivery of singer Zera Marvel give One Night Falls many of the trappings
of classic goth's gossamer strains, but, then again, there's a lot, lot
more melody than you're going to hear on the play list of any respectable
undead DJ.
So what exactly is going on with the Satellites? It's pop that's for sure.
Both the band's deep-sea melodies and an ever-so-slightly playful demeanor
keep the band from sounding as grimly serious as the goth set. Whether
the band lets a fragile guitar figure unwind over sleepy bass, keys and
vocals ("Memory Wire") or lets Marvel's slightly grim vocals eclipse its
most pop arrangement ("Valentino"), there are still enough melodies entangled
in the murk of One Night Falls to appease pop fans who aren't scared away
by the dirge-like tempos and sometimes creepy orchestration.
No, pop doesn't bury its head in the sand and hide as soon as the sun
goes down - Tagging Satellites guarantees that with an album that's a
much needed change of pace from the sunny-side-up feeling so prevalent
in modern pop.
-Aversion.com
When
the definitive book about the Seattle music scene is written, there's
going to have to be a full chapter devoted to the work of ultra prolific
performer/composer/producer Graig Markel and his many musical endeavors.
Tagging Satellites is just one of them, and with "One Night Falls", remains
one of his most innovative and inspired. The ten-track disc's fusion of
jangly power pop and dark ambient soundscapes sewn together by the angelic
vocals of Zera Marvel recalls Hole, PJ Harvey, and Radiohead, shaken,
stirred, and poured into Phil Spector's martini glass.
-Stuart
Green, Exclaim Magazine
Tagging Satellites' third album will instantly transport
you back to the days
when shoe-gazer bands and smart but raw indie pop ruled the "alternative"
music
landscape - back when "Goth" wasn't a dirty word.
"One Night Falls" is dark in tone and foreboding in nature,
but never takes itself seriously enough to be mistaken for, say Sisters
Of Mercy, and the guitars are a bit on the poppy side to be mistaken for
Bauhaus.
The album's strongest point is how refreshingly un-ironic the music is.
It seems like these days that irony - despite what some pundits have said,
is alive and well in this post - September 11th world, a lot of nudge-nudge,
wink-wink cynicism.
Tagging Satellites forego all that and just play the music that they want.
The moody "DeHavilland Comet" sounds like a lost, Irish song,
while "Red Fence" could teach Hope Sandoval a few things about
the proper use of a soaring string section. A good soundtrack for those
introspective moments.
-CMJ
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