The Book of Knots, an artistic project from Brooklyn, New York, consist of many members down to being well known for collaborating with several big names, but the core members being Joel Hamilton, Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, and Tony Maiome, who since they formed in 2003 have worked hard in building up a reputation for their collaborations, and passion for Experimental music. Aiming to release three conceptual albums, ‘Garden of Fainting Stars’ being the third, which is to be released on Ipecac Records. With the mention of big hitters, such as Tom Waits and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I was intrigued as to how I would feel about this release, I almost instantly found out this album is not for the faint hearted. Right from the start it feels as though Book of Knots have kidnapped you, and dragged you blindfolded into a trippy grotesque cabaret performance.

Take slow burning guitar melodies, phasing in and out of aggressive feminine vocals, and then throwing in a screaming Tom Waits taunting you because (as it seems) he’s the last person alive on earth, and you’ve pretty much got a good idea of what had to be the general method to the whole piece. Although not a concept album, each song flows in an out of the next as though it were. But for some reason or another the harmony between each track is absent, and unfortunately it just doesn’t quite work.  

Although excited about this album at first glance, admittedly the structure of this album is messy and even after taking into account this is an experimental rock album after all; it is supposed to have a ‘theme’, which is still unnecessarily hard to follow. Looking back when Danger mouse and Sparklehorse released their collaborative album ‘Dark Knight of the Soul’ with huge names as David Lynch and Iggy Pop, it seemed the pair had spent a lot of time creating each track custom fit for each of the big names they had taken on, the songs were all as different as the collaborators, yet it seemed to work beautifully. Book of Knots however, seem to have taken something extremely self indulgent, and then placed the artists in their tracks as they see fit, but not to good effect. Unfortunately, the only part in the entire album that really worked well was Thom Waits’ distraught monologue (which crept in at the beginning and end of a track), simply because he almost pulled you into a post apocalyptic art house film, but alas, it wasn’t a film, it was an album that in the end just makes the listener feel slightly detached from the world. After listening to the album several times, just to make sure it had been given a real chance, I felt as though I had lost a little of my soul along the way…but maybe that was the point…?