The Good Ship Rediscovery: The Very Hush Hush - Mourir C'est Facile

We all forget about the older stuff from time to time, in our quest to stay up to speed with the latest and greatest. But one should always respect their elders. So don’t forget about them, y’hear?

As with many things, the way I discovered The Very Hush Hush has been lost forever in time. But what shouldn't be lost is this record. Released in 2006, Mourir C'est Facile (translation: "Dying is Easy") is an epic, incredibly and beautifully evocative of so much at once. The Denver band is just a duo, though they make enough noise for several full-size bands.

The record incorporates a little bit of shoegaze and a little bit of post-punk, along with, well, that noise I mentioned above, meaning there's plenty of fuzz and plenty of heavy, heady walls of crushing sound. "Slow Destroyer," for example, begins with a rush of air that elicits the moment of natural expectation just before a rainstorm, followed by the downpour of steady, intricate instrumentation. The exceptional "Eyes Become Rooms" crunches and batters, a cloudburst wrapped in a squall wrapped in a tornadic supercell.

I'm reasonably sure it was "The Outskirts" that initially hooked me, sinuous in its musical movements and more than a little spooky. It's like waking up to the fog rolling in, heavily wisping and alive with something almost unnatural. My two favorites close the record, "Green" pulling the album up to heavenly heights with the feel of the fog lifting and the sun streaming through, and "Coup de Main," the dizzying closing masterpiece, rich and hypnotic and glorious.

All told, Mourir C'est Facile is a brutally beautiful record. To listen to it is quite possibly to love it.

m4a: Coup de Main (The Very Hush Hush from Mourir C'est Facile)