Libraness: Yesterday ...and Tomorrow's Shells

Bowie's signature sound, an expansive flailing that suggests the Enter The Dragon soundtrack as performed by Sonic Youth, is best heard on albums by the now-defunct Polvo, with whom he played as lead guitarist. No matter how far Bowie took his tremolo-bar abuses, Polvo was there to catch him when he fell. As Libraness, though, Ash is going it alone—most of the songs on Yesterday... and Tomorrow's Shells are arranged for a single guitar and voice with what sounds suspiciously like a guy whacking a table on percussion. The liner notes don't state it explicitly, but judging from the audible tape hiss throughout the album, I'll bet that "Played and Recorded by A. Bowie 1993-2000" is a euphemism for "These are some of my demos."

Trying to handle both rhythm and lead duties at once takes a lot of the emotion out of Bowie's playing; he can't cut loose with his trademark intensity, but he's still way too experimental to be content with a good riff or two. So we're stuck with what sound like half-finished Polvo outtakes.

If nothing else, there are some great ideas here. The booming drums and koto-like guitar plucking of "You Are My Foreign Film" evoke the haunting exoticism its title hints at, while the babbling keyboards of "Toy Planetarium" suggest that Ash's stint in Helium rubbed off on him. "No Separation" could be the greatest song Polvo never recorded, slowly building from gentle guitar explorations into a sadly beautiful chorus. These tracks suggest that Libraness might have been the comeback Polvo fans had been waiting for if only Ash had been able to snag a backup band and some proper recording equipment. Just as you begin to hear through the shoddy production, though, a pointless distortion exercise called "Grief Mechanism" comes crashing in, and you see Shells for what it is: a collection of indulgent outtakes from a brilliant musician who should know better. (Tiger Style)

—Nicholas Webb

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