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Released on August 7, 2015 via Long Branch Records / SPV
The moody Icelandic rockers are back with a sophomore album of soaring and emotionally engaging songs. Clearly not a band who rush into things it’s taken them five years to make this record following the break out début A Long Time Listening. Indeed that album was pretty much the same in sound and texture as Destrier, which is to say if you’re looking for a band that balances the gleeful time-signature changing, loud/quiet dynamics of The Mars Volta with the obsessive musical detail of Battles (but without the self-indulgence of either of those bands) then Agent Fresco are for you. You’re not short-changed for your money either, in around fifty minutes the band present fourteen tracks for your consideration which come thundering over the horizon like the eponymous war-horse which lends its name to the album.
It’s not totally my kind of thing, that’s just my opinion, but there is plenty to like here – after a slow opening track the album bursts into life with ‘Dark Water’. From then on in the pace doesn’t let up for a minute – with only occasional minor quieter sections in the songs to catch your breath. Other songs that stood out for me were the double header in the middle of the album of ‘Howls’ and ‘The Autumn Red’. Also very good is the contrast between melodic singing and guttural growling in ‘Angst’ – a very satisfying juxtaposition.
Perhaps the band won’t like this, but I think they are a great pop-group – if we consider pop in its purest sense – as they match sad, almost introverted (certainly at times, obscure) words to searing musical compositions of great beauty. Agent Fresco write great songs, and I’m sure if Burt Bacharach and Hal David had electric guitars and a distortion pedal instead of a Steinway Grand Piano they’d have come up with ‘Destrier’. The sadness in the song – that’s the thing to study here – and it’s the sort of thing that will strongly appeal to a thousand EMO misfits in their bedrooms or bedsits. You are a movement of people, these are your anthems.
I very much liked Arnór Dan Arnarson’s falsetto, even if it does recall Cedric Bixler-Zavala a little too closely at times, it’s a voice of real quality with a whisper of an Icelandic accent. I also liked the contrasting nature of this voice against what is, at times, quite a hard-rock sound as the other band members pummel their instruments into submission – on the downside, there’s quite a bit of this kind of material about these days, but if Agent Fresco can burst out from the confines of their home-country, there’s no reason why the band couldn’t fill stadiums the world over.
