I have literally never met anyone else who likes Death Vessel, but he has made some of the prettiest music of the last ten years. First of all, Death Vessel is a MAN, which is almost literally unbelievable if you just hear the voice that comes out of his records, but I have seen him play live and the voice really is his. Second, he writes melodies that always spill about a bar and a half past where you think they’re going to. Hearing them for the first time feels like running off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote style, except that instead of eventually plunging into a canyon you float down, swaying back and forth like a big leaf. Third, he writes lyrics like someone who pays a lot of attention to his dreams without caring at all about what they could be supposed to “mean.”
I don’t expect the world to just rush in and love every musician I love, but it really is confusing to me that Death Vessel gets no praise whatsoever. Maybe this is because music criticism has neglected melody so egregiously in recent years (in favor of paying OCD-level amounts of attention to sonic texture).
This song is off his second album, Nothing is Precious Enough For Us. If you want to hear his first album as well, the first song you should track down is “Break the Empress Crown.”
