mr. Gnome, Deliver This Creature

It’s really, really hard for me to believe that that voice comes from where it does. One of the absolute best things about Cleveland duo mr. Gnome, comprised of guitarist/vocalist Nicole Barrile and drummer Sam Meister, is Barille’s singing; frankly, it’s incredible. The vocals are one part Tori Amos, two parts Karen O, and one part Jana Hunter, all run through a blues-belter filter and exploding out of Barille’s diminutive frame. There’s an oddly country-sounding twang to Barille’s voice part of the time, especially when she’s quiet and mutter-y (hence the Jana Hunter ref), but when the music expands to arena size, her voice expands to match, soaring operatically at all the right points. And then, when things turn nasty, hell, she can do that, too — see the angry, warning-sounding “Thief” for proof.

Happily, that kitchen-sink motif works for the rest of Deliver This Creature, the band’s debut full-length. Tracks like “After the Sun” (one of the disc’s several high points) and “Rabbit” veer wildly from quiet, woozily delicate sounds to raw, open-wound rock — in the case of “After the Sun,” the quiet part is some Portishead-ish almost-jazz, and parts of “Rabbit” come off like French cinematic-electronica guy Snooze, but then those sludgy, heavy-as-hell guitars come stomping in and crush the proceedings like Godzilla stepping on a pretty flower. Same goes for “Deliver This Creature,” which swings between frantic, aggressive prog-ish rock with a Tool bassline to swooning electronic lushness and right back again. The overwhelming wall of guitars and vaguely psychedelic bent to things occasionally brings to mind Silversun Pickups, but there’s less sweetness and more rage going on here.

For the heavy parts, there’s definitely a metal influence, too; “The Machine” is thundering and epic post-metal, reminiscent at points of ISIS or Pelican, but unlike those bands mr. Gnome punctuates the bombast with moments of fragile vulnerability. The band occasionally keeps it low-key, as on “Silhouette,” which is soft and delicate all the way through, with whispery vocals and Explosions in the Sky-style “lonesome West” echoey guitars, or “Night of the Crickets,” which is gorgeous and trippy, a sing-song-y soundtrack to a quiet (yet unsettled) night, but for the most part they ride the loud/soft dynamic to great effect. The album sounds to me like Jucifer might if they were force-fed a diet of Björk nonstop for a full week; it’s strange and seemingly all over the place, but pieced together the way it is, it’s almost freakishly compelling.

I can’t say Deliver This Creature is easy to listen to, because it’s really not — it’s somehow intensely uncomfortable, at least for me, and conjures up some truly strange images that creep around the edges of my subconscious as I sit here with headphones on. There’s a cracked fairy-tale quality to the music, partly because of Barrile’s voice but also because of the lyrics, which reference kings and pirate ships and cursed men and murky things happening at night. It makes me twitch and shudder and wonder what the hell’s going on, but then I want to listen to it all again.