THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION

THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION
AMORE DEL TROPICO (2002)
320 KBPS

From their impressions of a southwestern Afghan Whigs to their mimicry of Concrete Blonde and Beat Happening, The Black Heart Procession are making some of the best-and darkest background music around.
From the Hitchcock-ready piano driven slink of "The Invitation" to the ghostly howls heard on "Tropics of Love," BHP seemed poised to make the hippest horror movie soundtrack you've ever heard. Their lyrics are less poetic than simple narration of something wicked this way coming. Paulo Zappoli taunts the listener, "did you not see / wasn't it clear...the signs on the road...the writing on the wall," while percussionist Joe Plummer pounds away at what sounds like a broken snare drum stuck in a bathroom stall.
Zappoli and fellow multi-instrumentalist Tobias Nathaniel add layer after layer of chirping organs and pulsating synthesizers instead of going the usual verse-chorus-bridge highway. The end result is a sort of undead Yo La Tengo-if that makes any sense. Picture hoards of classic movie monsters laboriously jamming with Lou Reed and David Bowie in an abandoned amusement park just before Scooby and the Mystery Machine gang arrive.
Call it post-gothic or The Cure gone convincingly trip-hop. Whatever it is-it certainly isn't music to listen to in daylight. Rather, it's the perfect album for a newly opened opium den, or maybe the last song in a Roman Polanski or Darren Aronofsky film. It's good stuff-but it's not for the faint of heart.

1. The End of Love
2. Tropics of Love
3. Broken World
4. Why I Stay
5. The Inviation
6. Did You Wonder
7. A Sign on the Road
8. Sympathy Crime
9. The Visitor
10. The Waiter #4
11. A Cry for Love
12. Before the People
13. Only One Way
14. Fingerprints
15. The One Who Has Disappeared