Old Fire — Voids
Qobuz new release review (Oct. 2022)
It’s been six years since Texas-based musician John Mark Lapham (ex-Late Cord, ex-Earlies) debuted his Old Fire project with the utterly incredible Songs from the Haunted South. On that record, Lapham — with musical help from the likes of Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive), Tom Rapp (Pearls Before Swine), Thor Harris (Swans), and others — took the template of 4AD projects like This Mortal Coil and the Hope Blister (mixing covers and originals with no real fixed lineup of musicians) and made a record just as haunting and ethereal, but with a more definable personality. With Voids, he’s finally coming through with a follow-up, and it does not disappoint. The list of collaborators here has expanded — Defever and Harris are on board again, along with tremendous contributions from Bill Callahan and (a sampled) Julia Holter — and the mood has managed to get even darker. Perhaps that’s not surprising, considering the emotional tenor of the last few years, but Lapham also digs deeply into heartbreak and loss to emerge with an eviscerating set of music. Callahan shows up three times, making his inimitable voice something of a defining feature of Voids, most notably on a dissonant and sonically dense update of Pentangle’s take on “When I Was In My Prime” and an utterly gut-wrenching version of John Martyn’s “Don’t You Go,” which turns the anti-war anthem into a meditation on loss of all kinds. By the time the album gets to its titular centerpiece, Lapham has taken the listener through a richly crafted and emotionally tense journey. And while that title cut is demanding in its own way — it is, after all, a 25-minute, four-piece suite that closes the album — it forsakes the lyrical intensity of much of the rest of Voids and instead asks the listener to participate in a sort of Southern Gothic sound bath, complete with swampy brass, flickering electronics, and ominous ambience.
