Three guitarists and a drummer. It sounds like the premise for a Tom Selleck movie but the fact that this album also sounds like a Tom Selleck movie is testament to its film score like qualities. Detour 33, a Finnish quartet, debut can best be surmised with the modern proverb: where words fail music speaks.
Completely without lyrics, this album conveys the nuances of language through a complex layering of verbose guitar parts, removing the standard ask and response nature of lyrical waxing between the player(s) and audience without impeding the relationship towards the listener and instead replacing it with moody blues and articulate passages sung on a fret board to command the conveyance of emotion coming through.
Called Tamed by Fear the album has a very short run-time, coming in at around twenty-four minutes, and it seems to be missing a foreground. Its melodies blend like thermochromatic hair dye and as such tamed becomes subdued and the expression on this album while accurate is very grey and overcast. Quickly delving into somber tones and inspiring slow, dark nights with knitted jumpers. Befitting of an all acoustic composition.
It’s a pity that many of the dynamics are lost in the mix. In fact the production, especially towards the end, features some half baked noise gating. Distorting the soft characteristics and losing transmission in the way the expression appears to indicate.
As an acoustic album it’s a humbling way to warm your head and hands. Until the heat dies down and, with the previously mentioned exceptionally short album run time, it melts back into the darkness; Fun fact: it took Tom Selleck longer to trim his mustache than it does to listen to this album in its entirety.
7/10
