DM Stith - Pigeonheart

Poet, painter and protégé of Sufjan Stevens, David Michael Stith first came to attention in 2009 with ‘Heavy Ghost’, blending his high multi-tracked voice with brass, strings and subtle electronica. After a lengthy writer’s block, he re-emerged as one half of The Revival Hour, a more experimental collaboration with John-Mark Lapham of The Earlies. And now, not before time, comes his solo second album ‘Pigeonhole’.

It’s an extraordinary piece of work by Buffalo-born Stith, working with British producer Ben Hillier (Depeche Mode, Nadine Shah, Elbow) on a collection of fragile emotional songs delivered with delicate double-tracked vocals shrouded in an array of electronic effects, from gently skittering background beats to frenzied cacophonies incorporating dubstep sub-bass, crashing percussion and choral refrains.

The almost a cappella ‘Amylette’ floats on a sampled vocal, Stith reciting seemingly random phrases – “I was out of luck/Keep your eyes on me now” – while ‘Sawtooth’ recalls Sparks’s synthpop era with its urgently clattering rhythms, sweet falsetto and opaque lyrics about “two sets of teeth and two sets of eyes/ And sheepskin lies about wasted time” (me neither).

Delve deeper in an attempt to decipher those lyrics and there’s a desperate romanticism at work - “Here’s what I need: a year in your life/ We’d sawtooth together, eat each other alive”. Yet the song meanings, matched by the music’s densely dissonant distractions, remain difficult to decode, revealing themselves only in fragments. And therein lies the attraction, for ‘Pigeonheart’ is a record that rewards repeated listening, unravelling like a combination of ‘Kid A’-era Radiohead and the new James Blake collaboration with Justin Vernon, whose voice shares the same keening quality.

Not that it’s “difficult” listening: Stith’s sweet falsetto timbre welcomes the listener in and the electronic experiments are interspersed by shorter instrumentals (‘Nimbus’, ‘Murmurations’) and pastoral interludes (‘Cormorant’, ‘Summer Madness’, ‘Up To The Letters’). The latter burbles like a babbling brook, driven along by gentle percussion, acoustic guitar and piano. Conversely, ‘War Machine’ matches distorted choral voices with clattering electronics and percussion and a sinister vocal refrain: “I nearly said it – why’d you hurt me?”

Meanwhile, ‘My Impatience’ repeats another insistent mantra – “Tell me when it’s over/I wasn’t thinking” - and evolves over seven minutes into a hypnotic soundscape filled with ecstatic melodies and a celestial choir chanting a single note en masse: a spectacular example of ‘Pigeonheart’’s capacity to transport the listener into a dreamlike state of altered consciousness. It’s a very special record that offers more with every listen.