My Home, Sinking ~ My Home, Sinking

Supergroup alert!  When Enrico Coniglio decided to record a new type of album, he didn’t want to go it alone.  In 2011, he released a track titled “The Void”, which appeared on Wire Tapper 26 under his own name.  That track launches My Home, Sinking, which then branches out in all directions with contributions from Katie English (cello), Laura Sheeran (voice), Barbara De Dominicis (voice), Orla Wren (piano plus), Se’n Quinn (synthesizers) and Marc Aubele (backing vocals).  The result is a mesmerizing disc in the 4AD tradition, suffused with a shimmering beauty and a simmering menace.

For two tracks, the album is entirely instrumental, linking the new material to the old.  A strange looped knock, like a hoof print in snow, turns the timbre of “Morning Walk” into something foreboding.  Even the melancholic guitar and cello can’t disguise the fact that bitterness has entered the air.  Those familiar with Laura Sheeran already suspect that a cold wind is near; Sheeran’s dulcet tones often hide a pinched pain.  On “Fading to White”, she sings, “There’s no sun, there’s no love, there’s no God above can bring me back to your heart”, echoing the rules of Aladdin.  No magic lamp or deity will force a lover’s affection.  In “The Body Tired, Pt. 1”, she sings of a buried key and a boy asleep at the bottom of a lake.  If Sheeran weren’t wearing a wedding ring in recent photographs, we’d be worried.

De Dominicis’ “Sunset Eyes” lightens the mood somewhat with childlike tones and bells; that is, until one realizes that she’s talk-singing about corpses.  What is going on here?  Clear hints are apparent in the album’s title and cover art.  This album isn’t meant to be uplifting; it’s a disc of dissolution.  In the intermittent instrumentals, one can hear the house sinking: the knocking on the hull/hall of “Truna”, the slow fuzz of “Descending”, the frigid electronics of “The Body Tired, Pt. 2”.  “Snowflakes came down like small knives”, sings De Dominicis on the final vocal track.  But the album ends on a note of hope: “Trump Trump” is a field recording of footsteps on snow, purposeful and resolute, the sound of someone who has survived and has the will to soldier on.  (Richard Allen)

Available here