No Fire in the Sand, the new Black Sea Dahu EP is a stark 5-song package dealing with the repercussions of heartbreak, and it arrives right on time. Released just weeks apart from the new Bon Iver opus i i, it delivers what I’ve been hoping that he would – a record full of grainy emotions extracted from a damaged rib-cage. It’s unfair for me to demand this of him (or any artist for that matter), ie. that he suffers and delivers what he did on his debut, but I’m hungry like that. So, getting this release from Janine Cathrein and company was exactly what I needed. This is music as a willing and unavoidable surrender to a voracious undertow of emotions and, hopefully, the type of purge that its author needed. I hope you’re doing okay Miss Cathrein!
No Fire in the Sand is lo-fi-esque Urban Folk at its finest. The songs sound like they were written on and around Cathrein’s acoustic guitar, but they explode with fleshy arrangements whenever her tortured, wooden box is just not enough to accentuate the depth of the turmoil that she’s reaching to express. How You Swallowed your Anger and Rhizome are the two main crossover pillars on this release. But it was Demian and Thaw that got me. Both of these tunes have a trance like quality about them, a space that is easy to enter into and somehow hard to leave. It’s a precious thing for somebody to share their memories with such extreme fidelity and to unpack their life, in public, like this. I am very grateful for it.
TOUR DATES:
Oct 17 2019 – FR, Paris, Mama Festival
Nov 28 2019 – FR, Limoges, El Doggo
Nov 30 2019 – UK, Faversham, The Hot Tin
Dec 01 2019 – UK, Newcastle, Bobiks
Dec 03 2019 – UK, London, The Grace
Dec 04 2019 – UK, Manchester, The Castle Hotel
Dec 06 2019 – BE, Eupen, Schlachthof
Jan 16 2020 – NL, Amsterdam, Paradiso
Jan 17 2020 – NL, Groningen, Eurosonic Festival
