Snake Eats Boy and the sustained dark art folk dance of "The Haunting of H. Quinn" (Official Video)

 

"...locked away in my skull..."

"The Haunting of H. Quinn" by UK alt-folk, art folk singer-songwriter and divergent painter of emotions, Snake Eats Boy is a haunting waltz of sorts and is my second sonic gift from this artist / project that started out as a collective (of sorts or not) in the Kent countryside. I first heard of Snake Eats Boy just 7 months ago when I was quietly and thoroughly blown away by his track "Early Mournings" which I wrote "is like your avergage Van Gogh painting, instantly sad, yet hauntingly beautiful" and it is just that. In truth, maybe saying sad was too minimal. The emotional pull in that song is deeply, deathly sad. (see review here)

This time around Snake Eats Boy lays down a charming percolating acoustic guitar with built in bass notes that dance with and around the melody. The affair with SEB's beautiful vocal aesthetic and self harmonies is less melancholy but just as emotionally touching and wistful. I did think of Elliot Smith in timbre and the smartly elegant bounce of the lyrical melody and maybe (less so) Conor Oberst in the pushed internal, eternal distress. SEB's vocal aesthetic is ultimately his own with any unintended similarities feeling like faint ghosts. I love the less sad and more charming illusions created here on "The Haunting of H. Quinn" as SEB waxes poetic about the "haunted house inside his head" and to the dark neighborhood where "all the streets lead" as he "roams around these tunnels under my hair" (God, I love that line). SEB tugs at his words creating wonderful sustains as he darts quickly then slows down like kids trying to chase their own shadows. It all makes for a whimsical, and deeply beautiful emotional fray, that kind of deep beauty that you might feel harder when you are 12 and crushed by unrequited love or 62 and wondering where your life went. 

However dreamy or wistful or folk tale-ish this feels it is in essence is a macabre tale of PTSD and as SEB reveals "how bad memories have the power to creep up and lead them 'to that cerebral address in that scary neighbourhood'". In the end, the track feels like a cathartic story of all the nightmares that hold us back put their by deep psychological hurt caused by a whole lot of stuff, emotional bruises sitting dormant only to rise up never having healed quite enough.

-Robb Donker Curtius 

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:


At the heart of this music lies the frail beauty of acoustic folk-noir luminaries Will Oldham, Mark Linkous & Conor Oberst. But just as Sparklehorse and Bright Eyes were prone to full electric sonic outbursts, Snake Eats Boy’s electric guitars threaten to unleash unpredictable, violent strikes, just as the schizophrenic reptile of the collective’s moniker moves from docile house-pet to aggressive predator.

And with senses finely-tuned to their surroundings, Snake Eats Boy channel an environmental influence into their music…the folky beginnings of a countryside upbringing giving way to the wavy-surf tones of electric guitars from a decade of living by the coast.

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