Willard Grant Conspiracy, Regard the End - 48m 17s

Tracks & Durations

1. River In The Pines	4:47
2. The Trials of Harrison Hayes	3:18
3. Beyond the Shore	3:15
4. The Ghost of the Girl in the Well	4:52
5. Twistification	5:25
6. Another Man Is Gone	3:24
7. Soft Hand	5:45
8. Rosalee	3:33
9. Fare Thee Well	4:11
10. Day Is Passed And Gone	1:49
11. The Suffering Song	7:50

Note: The information about this album is acquired from the publicly available resources and we are not responsible for their accuracy.

Review

While lead singer and principal songwriter Robert Fisher is obsessed with folk archetypes--the drowned and the damned, murder-ballad ghosts, and gospel sojourners--and liberally taps traditional sources, these dark, forbidding songs aren't merely arcane or gothic. "Sufferings going to come to everyone some day," Fisher chants along with Jess Klein, and we could only wish the song didn't speak to the here and now. Arrangements begin with folk-friendly guitar, mandolin, and violin, only to rise into soundscapes worthy of Lambchop, if not Tricky. The 11 members (not counting seven guests) of this collective love eerie, organic atmospheres but they love melody even more. Slide guitar plays against grand piano, viola moans around melodica, and Fisher's voice--ranging from baritone to middle-of-the-earth--puts the sting, and even some redemption, back into his fatalistic visions. --Roy KastenWillard Grant Conspiracy, the band fronted by Robert Fisher with as many as 31 rotating members throughout the world, has completed its fifth "official" full-length album, kicking off their relationship with Kimchee Records. Regard The End follows 2000's Everything's Fine and previous albums Mojave (1999), Flying Low (1998), and 3 am Sunday @ Fortune Otto's (1996) with several key differences. Fisher's songwriting has begun its transition into weighty subject matters such as death, hope and faith, as traditional songs meld with new Fisher compositions in such a way that it's impossible to discern which is which. "River In The Pines" from 1865 sits beside "Beyond The Shore," a new composition, and the two are strangely unified. Additionally, the new album marks the departure of guitarist Paul Austin as a full-time member, although he appears on the disc. It was mostly recorded in Slovenia, a place the band happened to be at the moment the album wanted to be born.! Eighteen musicians were enlisted to play on Regard the End, among them Chris Eckmen of The Walkabouts as well as Kristen Hersh (Throwing Muses), Blake Hazard, and Jess Klein, all of whom contribute vocals on the new album. Using a varied palate of acoustic and electric instruments including viola, trumpet, wheezing pump organs, grand pianos, violin, and acoustic and electric guitars, the record unfolds itself to the listener in layers. Its songs of universal emotions are told with a mixture of personal experience and enough storytelling to allow the listener to inhabit them with his or her own experience.

"In a way, the album is a meditation on morality," Fisher says. "The theme is a classic in all art--how you relate to your death is how you define your life. Most of the songs are about grief and loss and coming to terms. It's not a blues record but it has cathartic effects. I write the songs and the band makes them breathe and live. And then the audience brings their own experience to bear in the songs. It doesn't matter whether we play them in Sweden, Germany or Texas-- people seem to find commonality."

Upon its European release Uncut magazine named Regard the End its "Album of the Month" and at year's end gave it "Top 5 Albums of 2003" honors, declaring, "Regard The End is the first Willard Grant album to truly immerse yourself in. In ditching most of their traditional band ethic, they've tapped into the finest folk gothic traditions of death, suffering, misery and hardship and fashioned a paradoxically uplifting, transformative record of extraordinary power."

Other Versions

Albums are mined from the various public resources and can be actually the same but different in the tracks length only. We are keeping all versions now.

Regard the End

Tracks: 11, Disk length: 47m 57s (-1m 40s)

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