Psychedelic soul music

Dekkagar
The National Trust
Thrill Jockey It is often suggested that soul music cannot be faked, that any hint of discomfort or mortality will show through. While the theory holds quite a bit of water, it is also true that with the carelessness that such talent can afford you comes meticulous craftsmanship. The National Trust spent over 500 hours in the studio creating their first album, Dekkagar. With all of that time, the album is full of the obvious overdubs and the heady psychedelic sound scopes one would expect. What makes it all work is the group's absolute allegiance to a specific groove for each song. This means that they built up songs with embellishments rather than constructing patchwork songs with uncomfortable juxtapositions. The National Trust sound like experts of the genre by employing all the tools that make soul music work. They understand that in soul music the singer must rely on his vocal intonations to make the lyrics come to life and not on the value of the words themselves. To do this it is not only necessary to understand your capability as a singer, but also as a lyricist. The songs on Dekkagar never get weighed down by the lyrics. In fact, their lyrics are secondary. The true value of the album is in the backing music. Often the songs are patterned around a simple hook and/or a piano chord or riff, which gives each song an anchor for the listener to hang on to. It is then up to the listener to choose how they want to take the music. The consistent groove would allow them to accept it as pleasant white noise, but close attention will reveal almost all of the 500-plus hours of work that went into the album. The harmonies and falsettos are hardly perfect, but they give the album a human presence which is especially important since the rest of the album is positively astral. At times, the sheer mass of sound washes over the songs, but mostly the sound is separated. Often a silly or brilliant melody comes out of nowhere, and its jarring presence will make you emphatically giddy.