(2021) His Name Is Alive – Hope Is a Candle: Home Recordings 1985-1990


Review:
On the series of archival releases that began with All the Mirrors in the House, the ambient sounds that enveloped His Name Is Alive’s mercurial albums finally came to the forefront. Hope Is a Candle: Home Recordings 1985-1990, the series’ final installment, feels like the meeting point between the band’s early 4AD albums and the works unearthed on previous volumes. There are still plenty of the shimmery atmospheres that made Mirrors so striking (the guitar bliss of “Princess” and “Nearby”‘s soft-focus strings are two fine examples) and the forays into noisier territory that emerged on Return to Never (Home Recordings 1979-1986, vol. 2) (the distortion-fest “Halo” is as radiant and formidable as an Old Testament angel). As striking as these pieces are, some of Hope is a Candle‘s thrilling moments occur when Warren Defever approaches the sound of Livonia and Home Is in Your Head. The collection brings listeners up to the year Livonia was released, and longtime fans will immediately recognize “Either”‘s undulating guitar as the backbone of that album’s “Some and I.” Here and on “Liadin”‘s gorgeous refractions, which foreshadow Home Is in Your Head‘s interludes, Hope is a Candle makes a case for being the prettiest volume of the series. Elsewhere, the collection trades cohesion for surprises, and its unpredictable shifts in mood and sound feel true to the quicksilver changes of His Name Is Alive’s later music. “Never” is a lovely acoustic guitar sketch that hints at the pastoral side Defever expanded on with Home Is in Your Head, Mouth by Mouth, and many self-released works; “Disappear” is a fascinating study in droning guitars and polyrhythms; and “Still”‘s deep metallic drones, strings, and feedback have a heaviness that predicts some of the sounds Defever explored years later, as well as the work of the Haxan Cloak. Sometimes, as on the Eastern-tinged shoegaze of “Salendro” or the reflective chugging of “Porter,” these tracks feel ready to be joined by Karin Oliver’s bewitching vocals and the further guitar heroics Defever added to Livonia, hinting that this era of His Name Is Alive was nearing its end and another was about to begin. As on the other volumes of the series, Hope Is a Candle makes tracing the changes in Defever’s music fascinating, and once again gives the feeling that this music is a window into some other, more beautiful, dimension.





Tracklist:
01 - Princess
02 - Either
03 - Coldless
04 - Liadin
05 - Disappear
06 - Never
07 - Pass
08 - Nearby
09 - Salendro
10 - Porter
11 - Still
12 - Halo
13 - Insiders


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits