Cranes: Future Songs. http://www.dadaphonic.com

1. Future Song
2. Submarine
3. Flute Song
4. Sunrise
5. Don't Wake Me Up
6. Driving In The Sun
7. Fragile
8. Eight
9. Even When
10. Everything For
11. The Maker Of Heavenly Trousers

The character Drusilla is one of the most appealing (or appalling)
recurring characters on Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel. A prim
Victorian beauty, prone to `visions' and with penchant for dolls, she
is easily one of the deadliest of nemeses in the contained world of
the programs. In spite of her little girl airs and precious
affectations, she's stark raving mad and void of morality. Cruelty
and the hunt for blood, for her, is at best a child's game and its
worst an aesthetic pursuit—the undead's version of needlepoint.
Cranes have always encompassed that dichotomy. Jim Shaw's
compositions vacillate between pastoral minimalism and grinding urban
cacophony. Singer Alison Shaw's voice, a love it or hate it little
girl squeak, is either gothic and spooky or uncomfortably
twee. "Future Songs" is a more ambient affair, adding a healthy dose
of Electronica into the familiar terrain of minor chords, gentle
guitars and stalwart drumming. The strain of classicism, missing in
the previous release, "Population 4," makes a welcome return, in
particularly in the sampled organ and flute tones on the
appropriately titled "Flute Song." The title track is highly
reminiscent of 1991's "Watersong," which isn't necessarily a slam—the
band is fond of reprises. Several pieces here reach for a glistening
Cocteau Twins-like beauty; others, like the brooding "Submarine" are
eerie and perverse—Alison sounds like a child murderer against the
industrial-lite background. "Future Songs" will not win Cranes any
fans; but it satisfies those already entranced.

--Craig L. Gidney