DEATH VESSEL

Boston youth returns, signed and delivered

By JONATHAN DONALDSON

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Death Vessel is not a hard core band. It is Joel Thibodeau, a well-spoken, long-haired New Englander and the soft-hearted core of Death Vessel. I decided not to ask Thibodeau about his high-voiced singing because I figured it would just be lazy journalism. Instead I have decided to describe it. Thibodeau doesn't so much parrot Devendra Banhart's 78 RPM-warble or, for that matter, Joanna Newsom's man-child aesthetic. Indeed, Thibodeau is not performing at all; his poetry is being sung by his anima—the primeval force that resides within all men.

His second album, Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us (on mega-indie Sub Pop), is a stockpile of pretty melodies and inventions of traditional folk interspersed with some of wyrder elements. It is also plump with examples of Thibodeau's esoteric lyrics that evoke "the sort of places that I'm able to get to within each one of the songs," he says. "These aren't really stories in that they follow from 'A' to 'B' to 'C.' It is more of a perforated view." Much of Thibodeau's language treads the water not touched by modern songwriters. He cites not musicians, but authors, such as Brian Evenson and Gary Lutz, as lyrical influences. I suggest to him that he could be using language that maybe has never been used in pop songs, ever.

"There aren't really boundaries," he says. "People are looking to create boundaries so that they can at least feel they have some kind of reference point ... I understand the tendency."

DEATH VESSEL

WITH MICAH BLUE SMALDONE

THURSDAY 9.25.08

HARPERS FERRY

158 BRIGHTON AVE.

ALLSTON

617.254.9743

9PM/18+/$10

HARPERSFERRYBOSTON.COM

DEATHVESSEL.COM