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Mantança
LISTEN: It's Harder to Break a Habit Than a Promise Days Fade Into Weeks Hope and Hopelessness BUY: Mantança CD $6 - DOMESTIC(includes shipping) $16 - INTERNATIONAL (includes shipping)
Judith and Holofernes: • Tracy Hobbs: voz
• Markus Hobbs: viola baixo • Mitch Hobbs: viola • Dos da Rosa: guitarra e voz Mantança was recorded in June 2004 at Little Echoes by Adam Krammer and Shawn Biggs. MORE: Judith and Holofernes full-length CD/LP
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Matança
Judith and Holofernes
Description: The second self-release (the first, Dairy Men and Festa Queens, is now out of print) from the San Francisco fadistas embraces topics that this quartet does so well: sadness, remorse, drunken trysts, broken promises, hope and hopelessness. In a word, saudade. This five song EP is short, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in content. The title, Mantança, is Portuguese for "the killing," a traditional festival that finds a pig, lovingly fattened through the year, slaughtered and fed to everyone in attendance. The songs, as beautifully hopeful as they are tragic, find their creators conscious of their Catholic guilt as well as their carnal want. It's harder to break a habit
The thing I love most about the music of Judith and Holofernes is their unflinching approach to subjects close to them. Perhaps too honest for some, the songs are direct, and distill everything ordinary and obscene into a melody that sticks in my head for days at a time. A soundtrack to a regrettable time, something to quell inertia, an unlikely pick-me-up--music, at it's best, unsettles the listener. I prefer to listen to music that makes a genuine expression--whatever it is. Judith and Holofernes make music that is genuine, and is also true to their experiences. A dear friend of the band hung himself in 2003, and the loss, grief and survivor's guilt left a heart-shaped hole in their lives. To say that loss is a central theme in the band's life would be an understatement as well as a misrepresentation. While the suicide produced an aperture through which all that terrible darkness shone, it also begat an endurance rooted in a will to outlive such terrible darkness. Dos DaRosa, Judith's male voice, was a lifelong friend of the deceased, and has, through fits of drunkenness and tears, exalted and exorcized his friend. Dos has a beautiful way of saying all that is terribly personal in such a way that it doesn't seem so sharply pointed. "Hope and Hopelessness," the third song on the EP, is the perfect example. After his first attempt at suicide, looking for some assurance, Dos' friend tattooed the word "HOPE" on his arm. The first time I heard this song it was obvious, to me, what Dos was singing about: well that single word, would not have kept us. The song asks questions: Was your suffering too great
And, in the end, Dos answers his own questions, screaming over himself, both exalting and exorcizing the death, unsettling. You're too weak to stand
The music of Judith and Holofernes may not be for everyone (if in everyone we count teenagers and hipsters fixated on kitsch and novelty). For those interested in compelling, interesting music that will absolutely unsettle, then this band is worth it's salt. The music is best described as "fado," which is an old-world Portuguese folk music. Employing the styles and instruments of fado, Judith and Holofernes lend their own personal ethos to the tradition. The band, who--judging by their subject matter--must be wallowing in it, are twice as prolific as most of their shoe-gazing peers. If you've been hoping for something new to get you, Judith and Holofernes will kill. And when they are through,
Hope, there's no such thing,
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