(Tent Show/East West)

By Hannah Clemens

Somewhere in West Virginia there’s a town where convicts outrun dogs and floodlights in a last desperate bid for freedom over prison walls, where a grieving widower resurrects his wife and child with voodoo rituals (or perhaps just dreams he does while drowning his sorrows in moonshine), where a long-closed brothel stands witness to tales of girls forced to buy their freedom and the men who tried to help them escape, and where the fine particles of coal dust get under doors and floorboards, stain every fingernail, and permanently darken clothing – as indelible as the feeling of imminent doom that follows the occupants wherever they go.  From this archetypal Adirondack village came most of the stories on Murder by Death’s “In Bocca al Lupo.” Or at least, it seems plausible that this one elusive location full of clapboard housing and abandoned mine shafts could be the intangible common thread uniting all twelve diverse and foreboding songs on “Bocca.”

One is tempted to label Murder by Death seminal because their sound is not radio-friendly or formatted to appeal to a wide audience, even by today’s indie standards. But “Bocca” is not ahead of its time or avant-garde to the detriment of album sales and CMJ chart placement. Murder by Death draw their sound from the past, not the future – on “Bocca” you’ll find a mutinous sea chanty, a Prohibition-era jazz/swing hybrid laced with distorted guitars, and choral finale that sounds like it could be in that number when the saints go marching in. Even in the most dirge-like of Murder by Death’s songs there is an inescapable momentum, often realized when the tune undergoes an Arcade Fire-esque rhythm change two-thirds of the way through.

Somehow frontman Adam Turla manages to summon just as many genres and moods from his brash, growling vocals. He is a feeble grandfather in “Dynamite Mine,” a ship full of malcontents in “Dead Men and Sinners,” a drawling older sibling in the first single, “Brother,” and the resigned ghost of Johnny Cash in “The Big Sleep” (which sounds, lyrically and stylistically, as though it could have been a B-side from “The Man Comes Around”). Turla may be lacking in elaborate lyrical poetry and vocal range, but he compensates with conviction and charisma perfectly suited to Murder by Death’s confrontational arrangements. When he’s not purring soulfully, his words are blunt objects hurled incessantly at stubborn targets.

Thanks in large part to Turla’s earnest performance and the innovative use of Sarah Balliet’s cello (it’s not just for acoustic ballads anymore), the songs on “In Bocca al Lupo” would probably be best experienced around a bonfire in the dead of night, with the threat of highwaymen and escaped prisoners crouched in the darkness adding to the urgency of the lyrics. Like the repentant criminal in “The Big Sleep,” by the time “Bocca” reaches its end you’ll expect to see the Devil coming to collect his due. Since Murder by Death’s forthcoming tour dates don’t include any midnight shows at the crossroads, you’ll just have to imagine sparks, stars, and fireflies overhead as the heat of the flames accompanies lyrics about consuming fire. Listen closely between songs and you may hear the ominous sound of approaching hooves.

www.murderbydeath.com