The Singles Bar: Silica Gel worms under the skin with ‘Why Do the Nations & Peoples Rage?’
The avant-folk band sink into the murky waters of Midsommar.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
Voices cry in agonizing harmony, twisting the metaphorical knife as Midsommar would do. Those voices belong to Laura Thomas and Lauren Jones, central figures to avant-folk group Silica Gel. Out of Birmingham, Alabama the ragtime troupe of musicians — also composed of Joel Nelson (electronics, mandolin) Jasper Lee (pyraharp, percussion, recorders), and Myles Cain (moog synthesizer) — mount a wonderfully unsettling mission to not only soak the senses but drown the listener totally and completely. “Why do the Nations and Peoples Rage?,” an adaption of the 14th Century allegorical romance “Roman de Fauvel,” feels like an Ari Aster b-side.
Skeletal crunches soon drip into the five-minute epic, macabre and enchanting. Thomas and Jones allow their angelic performances to be the glue to hold it all together, swooning in and out of the mix with a chilling reverence. And that’s the most terrifying part. It’s too sweet. Too ethereal. Too enticing not to resist. Lee you may recognize as a core collaborator on the You’re Next score, and his talents, paired with such a strong unit of conspirators, serve him well in pricking the skin in such a way as to leave you gasping.
“Why Do the Nations and Peoples Rage?” samples the band’s first full-length record, May Day, out now everywhere.
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