Death Vessel - Nothing Precious Enough For Us Album Review

Album review of Nothing Precious Enough For Us by Death Vessel released through Sub Pop.

Perhaps the most inappropriately-named outfit in recent memory, Death Vessel release their second album on Sub Pop. Death Vessel is, essentially, the brainchild of lank-haired Dando-alike (Evan, not Jill), Joel Thibodeau, with a bunch of talented mates in tow, filling out the guitar sounds with horns, organs, banjos and ukuleles and lending folky vocals to the proceedings. Nothing Precious Enough For Us is a lively, plucky collection of tracks that sails a very open water between the Shins and Fleet Foxes and plunges the past on its travels.

Employing a production style that seems to be rather in vogue of late, every brush stroke, each clanging cymbal is intimate and realistic - there is no drowning in reverb, no auto-tune and no cover-ups. The drums are soft and distant, yet impassioned and the vocals lay over the intricacies of the guitar like a comfort blanket. The lyrics, though, just don't seem to catch. Atmospherically, Jennifer Black and Lisa Corson's vocals are perfect but they may as well just be sounds, for nothing seems to truly mean anything. And this is the one thing that stops Nothing Precious Enough For Us for being a truly great, truly uplifting record. You can't help but feel there is some depth of meaning down there somewhere but who'll be patient enough to scratch away until they find it?

Hayley Avron