The Old Ceremony is a band from Chapel Hill, NC, led by songwriter Django Haskins. They make lush, literate rock. Their third album, Walk on Thin Air, to be released February 2009, is a major leap forward musically in a progression that has always been surprising and unique. Whereas their self-titled debut record explored the dark corners of orchestral pop arrangements, with touchstones veering from Astor Piazzola to Alfred Hitchcock, their 2006 follow-up, Our One Mistake, leaned more to the Brit-invasion songcraft and melodic adventurousness for which songwriter Django Haskins has always been known.
Walk on Thin Air witnesses a band that has truly come into its own after years of touring and recording together. The hooks are still unmistakable, but the arrangements are denser and the overall mood is darker and more complex. Songs bleed into each other and create a unified listening experience rarely heard in these days of individual downloads and iPod shuffles that harkens back to the days when albums were a miniature world, not just a collection of singles.
The album touches on several recurring themes, chief among them the struggle to deal with large forces beyond our control, as mostclearly evidenced by “Plate Tectonics,” “Ready to Go” (the harrowing story of a car crash from multiple perspectives) and “Walk on Thin Air.” The response to these forces forms the counter-theme: defiance, despair, and finally, letting go.
As the character in “The Disappear” intones “Show me how to disappear/Tell me how it goes/Cause I’m ready to become a stranger in my clothes” just before trying to escape the overwhelming forces of his life. But it is the title track that lays out the true challenge, “You gotta decide before it goes by/You can try not to care/Or walk on thin air.” The Old Ceremony has made the choice to take the leap, and the reward for their daring is evident in the musical assurance and maturity of their new record.
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