Caspian

Caspian’s third attempt at sonic hegemony is Tertia—ten tracks that swirl, that twist and curl out of and into themselves, embracing the paradox of evoking the wildly specific by exploring the elusively abstract. There is a narrative, but it is spasmodic, fleeting—moments, amidst songs like “La Cerva” and “Malacoda” where the instruments come together to an inextricable point, yet they seem to be uniting to deliver this: Things are about to fall apart.

And then they do.

With teeth gritted tighter than previous work, “The Raven” showcases the leaden fury that weighs on the cracking atlas-spine of the album. There is something controlled about the plummet, though. It is as if the fall is really a volatile casting down of the familiar until, in “Vienna,” its pieces can be quietly examined amidst the passing violence. Out of the scattered shards comes the closing “Sycamore.” Beginning with the most delicate drippings of melody since their debut’s “Last Rites,” guitar lines weave around each other, bleeding and fading into a mosaic of polyrhythms that, for all their tribal wiliness, ceases with a single snap, soldering the instruments into something fused, smooth, new.

The band are as earnest and provocative as they’ve ever been. The rain of fists that was their debut EP, You Are The Conductor, bled into the distinctive-but-circular tone poems of their first full-length, The Four Trees. Now, Tertia. One word meaning ‘three’—the sum is merely an echo of its parts, the parts always aching to be one.

Tertia was written, performed and produced by Caspian. Ethan Dussault and Ed Llerena engineered and mixed the album at New Alliance East in Cambridge, MA in February, 2009. Mastering by Nick Zampiello and Rob Gonella at New Alliance East.