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What their label says...
With First Light's Freeze, Castanets return with a dark mutant-country
sound infused with strands of free-jazz, new wave and a late-seventies
Nashville big-radio strut hijacked by post-punk unravelers. The result
is a beautiful mix of somber reflection, destination-unknown
travelogue, and subversive anti-war boogie. Castanets' unrelenting
creative pioneering delightfully befuddles, as they simultaneously
flirt and dismantle "New Americana" venture capitalism.
Freeze confronts the mythology of war and friendship. Morphed from a
strictly literal and chronological song-cycle to a more broadly
sketched reading, the wraith of narrative structure still lurks in the
shadows, creating an eerie tale with shifting perspectives and evading
resolution. The story ends up resembling an ancient documentary on
relationships (others loved, feared, distrusted yet needed), the close
proximity of things painful and pleasurable, and the complications of
this as a paradigm for the world.
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