THEODORE!!!
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Blood Signs, the aptly named fourth record from the St. Louis four-piece, Theodore, showcases the band’s ability to tell hardscrabble stories in soft-hearted ways.
The EP builds off the success of last year’s highly acclaimed Hold You Like a Lover (released by Misra imprint Moon Jaw Records), which brought the band national attention. Already perennially voted one of the city’s best bands by the St. Louis Riverfront Times; Hold You Like a Lover pushed that praise beyond the Gateway City. The LP led to a profile in Paste magazine, a Daytrotter session, garnered acclaim from famed Seattle radio station KEXP, placed a track on the artist-curated Misra Legacy Compilation, and found itself alongside acts like Phosphorescent and Justin Townes Earle on Pop Matters list of top Americana albums of 2010.
Americana, however, has never been a label to adequately describe the Theodore sound. Although the St. Louis-area has historically produced some of the most innovative and influential American roots acts in the country (The Bottle Rockets, Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt), Theodore does not follow a traditional alt-country arc. Instead, the multi-instrumentalists take traditional genre signifiers and filter them through folk, noise, blues, and punk. Like their earlier records, Blood Signs contains elements of each of these strains.
Equal parts roomy and raucous, these six songs span a sonic spectrum. Comforting harmonies dissolve into dissonant screams. Melodic pianos and accordions suddenly swell amidst a squall of feedbacking guitars and effects. These shifting arrangements perfectly capture the feel of fractured relationships and the marks they bear on friends and family: blood signs.
In a slight shift from the more straightforward narratives of previous albums, here singer-songwriter Justin Kinkel-Schuster turns to declarations and pleas. Repeated, these imperatives take on a spiritual quality. And like all prayers, they range from hopeful to desperate.
Kinkel-Schuster’s lyrics have always evoked Raymond Carver short stories. In a voice part tremulous, part twang, he sings precise, unsparing, and everyday tales of fallibility, guilt, and redemption that humanize both the sin and the sinner. Those qualities, set against the backdrop of both intimate and earsplitting instrumentation, persist here. Theodore’s EP Blood Signs is a small, good thing.
