Spires That In The Sunset Rise
Location
- Chicago, IL
Websites
Record Labels
Artist Biography
Whether a duo, or a 3 to 4 piece unit, Spires That the Sunset Rise have been unsettling and thrilling audiences for over a decade now with their brand of sonic alchemy. Combining traditional acoustic instruments like cello, spike fiddle and banjo with electric elements and mesmerizing chants, one can call them goth, folk, psychedelic, experimental--and it all applies. Four full length releases on labels like Secret Eye and Galactic Zoo Disk and well-received world tours have earned them comparisons to such artists as Current 93, Harry Partch, Comus, and Yoko Ono-- yet their sound remains decidedly their own. Now paired down to long time members Kathleen Baird and Taralie Peterson, Spires That In The Sunset Rise continues to explore the outer limits of songwriting and the newer frontier of unhinged improvisation.
Selected Press
Maybe this pick is a reach when so many local traditional acts do their genres such honor (Devil in a Woodpile, Tangleweed, the Hoyle Brothers, and the many faces of Kelly Hogan, for starters). But this all-female freak-folk band is something different under the sun. They play goose-bump-inducing music that sounds like the ancient oral tradition of a culture of their own invention, and they play it with a sort of primordial shamanistic elegance and economy of purpose. Still, I was having a little angst over this decision, until “Black Earth” from their latest, Curse the Traced Bird, shuffled up on my iPod. I froze stock-still in haunted wonder, as if I were hearing it for the first time—and did I mention I was crossing State Street in traffic at the time? The band that can override your survival instinct wins.
Spires That in the Sunset Rise emit such inspired gusts of collective fire that they resemble a witches' coven almost as much as a band, their shadow-draped music seeming to issue forth organically from the soil like a sulfurous hot spring... [They] invoke the unbounded, ageless music one might expect to hear emanating from the deepest forest, as mysterious black-cloaked figures dance around the fire-ring.
This is the best release from Spires in the Sunset Rise yet... This is Fire (Secret Eye) is fantastic and is a big step forward for the band. There isn't a chink in their armor at all here. The music is constantly powerful and primal, not only that but the band are quite on their own in terms of style. As unique as I find them, it's only now that I think they've captured the perfect sound that they've been striving for.
intoxicating and intense!
The Spires' third album is a masterpiece in their already mind-boggling and totally unique musical ouvre. With This is Fire (Secret Eye), the all femme group takes another step away from the scattered pagan howls and freakouts of their incredible self-titled debut (The Slits plays Comus?) towards the realm of pure psychedelic mysticism.
[Spires] navigate an empathic terrain that veers between acid-damaged Comus-inspired witchery, and more mild-mannered areas that resemble Bridget St. John suffering from ergotism, or the Raincoats as a coven.