Murder by Death: Is It Rock and Roll or Something More?

It’s harder to listen to rock music as an adult than it was in my teens and 20s.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of rock acts I still dig, but overall my tastes have shifted. I crave maturity and emotional complexity in my music, which means there’s significantly more hip-hop, country, and jazz in my iPod nowadays than rock and roll. Maybe it’s that I overindulged in rock music when I was younger, rendering its tropes more familiar to me than the arguably more nuanced music styles I mentioned above. Or perhaps most rock and roll’s youthful angst simply no longer resonates in my mid-30s-with-two-kids life (with the exception of the more mature existential angst of acts like Fucked Up). Or perhaps rock music seems way too predictable anymore, unless the artist has an unexpected approach or something new to say.

So where does Murder by Death fall, then? To be fair – and to its benefit – this Kentuckian gothic-rock act follows its own pattern, drawing from everything from baroque pop to space-rock on the new The Other Shore. The results are pretty good, though imperfect, all indicative of a band capable of doing something really impressive but falling just shy.

“You run deep in me / like a place where a river used to be,” vocalist Adam Turla sings in “Stone,” his confident baritone just barely touched by gravel. “And I know it was a long time ago / but all that’s left is sediment and stone.” With its horns and desert-rock feel, the song itself drives forward like an Ennio Morricone score. The instrumentation and composition are consistently interesting throughout The Other Shore, though the lyrics can skew a bit heavy-handed. “You are a diamond / I’m just coal / if you are a river / I’m just stone,” Turla sings, then continues in the “You are a _______ / then I am a ________” comparative structure for a little too long.

Indeed, the only weak spots on this record are lyrical and melodic. Turla’s vocal lines tend to hew too closely to the instrumental progression. It would have been a more interesting record if he’d sung against what his bandmates were doing rather than mirroring it so closely. Granted, on some tracks this approach works, such as the Danzig-esque “True Dark.” When it doesn’t work, such as on the plodding and over-obvious “Last Night on Earth,” it can sink the whole song.

Murder by Death’s strongest moments on The Other Shore are the back-to-back cuts “Bloom,” “I Have Arrived,” and “New Old City.” “Bloom” and “I Have Arrived” both inhabit the same hypnotic space-rock sphere as the two most recent War on Drugs records. The patient “New Old City” points to the spacious post-rock of acts like Explosions in the Sky and Red Sparowes. Again, Murder by Death is a very strong band, instrumentally; anytime cellist Sarah Balliet’s melodies are allowed to take center stage, the tune is stronger for it, while multi-instrumentalist David Fountain’s textures (which range from brass to keys to mandolin) lend additional nuance to Murder by Death’s palette. The band goes beyond rock and roll tropes for sure, and what they do is interesting and musically nuanced — just imperfect.