A two-piece band before the format became de rigueur in hipster circles, 5ive (from Massachusetts not the boy band from the UK) play an instrumental doom-like style that incorporates psych elements to create a true sense of atmosphere and other worldly sounds - an impressive feat coming from just a guitarist and a drummer. Hesperus is the band's third full-length following 2001's self-titled and Telestatic Disfracture which is a decent gap in between albums. The band also saw a split with Kid 606 in between full-lengths. Mentioning the time limit is important for people like me because in 2001, this type of music was definitely not my cup of tea; but now, 5ive's style might be more up my alley and reflecting on this time difference allows me to listen to Hesperus with a much more open mind.
Damn! The production is super thick on Hesperus with the guitars just having this massive sounding quality, and not because they are loud. "Gulls" just has a guitar that sounds huge without being that way due to the producer mixing them out in front of the mix. The dynamics that 5ive display in their songwriting is impressive particularly in "Big Sea," which is an apt title for the composition because the song heaves like waves that ebb and flow and is calm like the oceans can be with atmospheric sounds that one could imagine being the breezes. The two short songs that Hesperus contains are exercises in polar opposites with "Kettle Cove" being all swirling guitar and intense drumming while "Heel" is more laid back with some real sharp, piercing sounds now and then juxtaposed against gentle picking of the guitar; but these two tracks break the album up for the listener to allow for the thick guitar sound of the album to not overwhelm all comers. The rolling nature of "Polar 70" mixed with the thick production present on much of Hesperus and another excellent dynamic composition make it a great song. The beginning is neat sounding (I can relate it to sounding like if twitching had a noise, this is how it would sound in my mind) that just seamlessly starts flowing into the rest of the track, which builds and builds in volume and breadth of sound as well. 5ive closes out the album with two tracks, "News I" and "News II," which are both powerful sounding tracks that continue to exemplify the great sound quality that the record offers.
5ive give us all something excellent to listen to and digest with Hesperus. I am surprised by how much I enjoy it considering my initial reaction to the band several years ago
that will now force me to go back and check out the other records by them again. The production is great: thick sounding guitars, atmospheric sound, and drums all sound just right making for a positive influence on the music as a whole. Hesperus is well worth hearing as there is plenty of good songs to hear; it is really a good record to toss on while working as it really just flows that way.
