Downriver Dead Men Go is a cinematic post-rock band from Leiden, the Netherlands. Their highly anticipated third album ‘Ruins’ has just been released. DDMG previously released two critically acclaimed albums: ‘Tides’ in 2015 and ‘Departures’ in 2018, gathering a loyal and ever-growing fan base. Both albums feature a mesmerizing, atmospheric, melancholic sound, ranging from post-rock to touches ofprog and dark wave.
I’ve been a long time fan of the band from my association with FREIA Music through my work with Bad Elephant Music and every DDMG album is a dense, imposing and highly melodic musical experience.‘Ruins’ takes that base and ramps up the tension to 11, a dark, brooding and utterly magnificent musical encounter that will linger long in the memory.
The guitars have that monolithic feel, as heavy and hard as age old granite yet hauntingly melodic at the same time. The music has a timeless grace to it, a melancholic leviathan that has a different concept of time or space than we do and has just awoken from an ageless slumber. There’s a wistful, desolate beauty to the songs starting with the timeless elegance of title track Ruins and the sparse grandeur of Secret. The sorrowful and plaintive pain evident in Helpless and Line in the Sand gives the tracks a thoughtful and mournful stateliness and the widescreen, cinematic magnificence of longest track Cruel World is a heart-wrenching joy to behold. The album closes with the short hypnotic apprehension of The Lie and you left feeling almost bereft.
‘Ruins’ is an album of varying emotions, stark highs and solemn lows, it’s a reflective and meditative work of art that is the ultimate soundtrack to a cold and rainy day spent in front of a roaring fire and, in my opinion, is simply superb!
The man called Gerrit rounded the corner, his earphones mingling the noises from the factory to his left with the music on his mp3 player, whilst the lost and lonesome dragged through another evening shift on minimum wage to keep the corporate wolf from the council house door. Under-appreciated he mused, he couldn’t, wouldn’t want to do their job.
His gait slowed as string like arrangements filtered into his ears, the pavement glistening, umber under the old street lamps and the damp air leaving a moist layer on the paving stones. The fog had crept in and choked the visibility down to a couple of hundred yards as he turned to stare across the cobbled street and the boarded up building opposite, hunched in the dark like a homeless giant huddled against the cold night air.
Gerrit Koekebakker pulled his sagging coat collar closer and his hat down in a futile attempt at shutting out the cold, then he stepped on to the cobbles and crossed to the old club. Fading, crinkled pictures in rusting frames, telling of faded stories from the past he had once been part of. He stared at them momentarily, reached into his coat pocket and removed his flat keys, pressing them firmly against the edge of one of the frames until it popped open fractionally and he could remove the photo. He stared at the curled edge photo for a second. She was in the picture serving at a table, his waitress.
Lamentation had been his only friend when he had lost her.
He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door, stepped into the dank, dark entrance and secured the door behind him. Using the light from his phone he found and flicked the fuse box switch. The lights fluttered on and he pushed through the musty red velvet curtain to reveal the club interior. It was two years since the band had played here, the club closing shortly after the last gig. It hadn’t changed in here though the world outside had moved on. His memory ran footage of the band up on stage, familiar faces mingling with newer ones in the audience. Things had seemed on the up when they left that night, he’d bagged the girl he’d fancied for some time and the band were gaining interest from promoters and labels.
Funny how it can all turn in an instant, a strummed guitar picked up the story.
He’d seen the waitress home with a promise to call the next day, returning to the place he shared with his Mother only to find an ambulance outside, lights flashing.
What would he do without her, his Mother had always been there for him, he hadn’t pictured her leaving. Distraught he stumbled through his emotions over the following weeks, haunting melodies playing in his head. Shutting out the empathy and rejecting company, he remained in the house leafing through old photos, solace in a bottle as he tried to fill the emptiness inside, the sounds of sorrowful guitar and keys mixing with sombre bass and drums intensifying from the stereo’s speakers, trying to crush the misery. He shunned his band-mates and the waitress. The club manager left messages terminating their residency with regret due to closure, one thing after another. The band fractured without him, going their separate ways to try and earn a crust.
Dropping the curtain behind him, he wove his way through the booths toward the dance floor as the last few guitar chords faded. With the bar to his left he stood on the dusty wooden floor before stepping on to the stage and turning to look around the room.
The waitress. He never thought he was in with a chance, always some big-time money boys around handing out fat tips, expecting repayment with interest. He was a jobbing musician, living with his Mother, what could he offer. But slowly over the weeks he’d watched her long legs in silk hose strut paths through the smoke infested punters, dodging the groping hands and lewd offers, always smiling, her lips the colour of cherries, and blonde curls of hair bouncing and floating as she turned and shimmied the shuttles between bar and tables, navigating trays of drinks to arrive unspilled. She would flash the ruby smile and he was entranced with her laughing blue eyes, just one night would be enough.
The night he walked her home she told him how pleased she was that he had finally spoken to her and asked her out, she had been waiting. She had been there some days as they rehearsed, pausing to sway to the languid keyboards and echoing guitar creating ripples of notes through the air, sometimes she would seem miles away, her body slowly dancing, shut off from everything around her and lost in the music…….How could he take her from being so happy only to make her the Loneliest Of Creatures.
Thoughts of the waitress made him smile wistfully and he slowly shook his head as the track rose on his plaintive vocals, the music turning heavier and distorting into the final keys from Remco den Hollander.
The next track plunged from his pocket and into his ears with a burst of heavy fuzzed guitar-work from Michel Varkivesser and Remco’s keyboards, Manuel Renaud’s drums bouncing vigorously alongside the bass of Fernandez Burton, before swirling into an echoing key loop and his voice began to sing about the Prison Walls he had built around himself…
Surrounding himself with a blanket of darkness trapped behind bars of his own making, he’d existed, barely, not considering the future or making decisions. There has to come a point of balance from which you start to return, or disappear. He resolved then, no more misery, things would be like before. It wouldn’t be easy but as the music strode out in a vote of confidence, he opened the curtains allowing the light to flow like liquid gold over the interior of the room. He couldn’t keep this place in darkness like a mausoleum any longer, it was his Home.
There was a noise. He pulled out the earphones as thunder and lightening rolled overhead outside and he could hear rainfall on the roof, accompanied by slow dripping into the bucket across the room. That would be fixed. He pondered on the quiet in the room and pushed the phones back in his ears, dismissing the air of loneliness. The most deafening screams were those of silence.
He had been at the stage where he’d wished someone would take this life away from him, the times he lost control during his period of mourning.
A hopeful guitar solo rose from the ear-bud speakers.
There had been a lot of Uncertainty to deal with, at times it felt he was taking one step forwards and two back towards the place where he had longed for seclusion. The darker moments of music echoing his moods but glimmers of hope being punched through by the drumbeats and guitar soloing as the long rebuild of his life began to piece together.
He’d contacted the band members, understandably there were Departures,a couple having made their own paths, but some of the old gang were still interested and they could audition new members. Where there had been a void of black and a writhing kaleidoscope of shadows, the jigsaw of his shattered soul that had promised fear forever more, began to free itself like a bird released.
Gerrit reminisced how he and Fernandez had recruited Michel to flesh out the guitar sound giving it a heavier edge and to provide backing vocals. They brought Remco and Manuel into the fold and whilst retaining the core sound of the band, impressed their own bass and drum styles into the music, as rehearsals and recording began with new found zest.
As the album tracks formed, the addition of guests Steen Gees Christensen playing duduk, and backing vocals from Inge den Hollander added different flavours to the mix, with spoken words from Joanne Platts highlighting the passages.
Confidence rebuilding there was one more matter to take care of. He thought she would have found someone else, but those he asked advised she was still single. He needed to see the smiling eyes and laughing lips on that Familiar Face. With trepidation and sweaty palms he arrived at her house. He’d hurt her, would she turn the key and let him in?
He knocked on the door, it swung open and there stood the waitress just as he remembered, the sunshine to his rain. With no remonstration and the sparkle in those blue eyes re-ignited, she flung her arms around him and kissed him deeply, it was going to be ok.
And so it was, his smile broadened as he sat on the edge of the stage and thought of the upcoming wedding, To Have And To Hold. He hoped his parents were looking down on him and he was making them proud.
And then there was the club. He had bought it using the monies left by his wonderful Mum and the savings Dad had put away which she had never spent, saving it for him to help when she had gone.
He’d best get going or he would be late for band practice. One last look round the room as it was, the builders would start the refurbishment work in the morning. Within a few weeks all would be transformed, a new look interior and a familiar band in residence for the grand re-opening.
He made his way out on to the street and locked the door. The rain had stopped and there was an added spring to his step as he disappeared round the corner.
Whilst the line up has altered, the sound from the last album remains but with an added edge. I enthused about the first album ‘Tides’ and still love it, so it was a real pleasure reviewing this sophomore offering that more than matches it. What influenced me reviewing the last album has inspired me again and rather than a straight track by track review of ‘Departures’, I felt the best way to do this was extend the story.
Those with a keen ear will notice references to the lyrics woven throughout the review and the musicianship on ‘Departures’ is as fine a production as you could wish, oozing with slick, languid rhythms and blossoming crescendos. If you liked ‘Tides’ then ‘Departures’ is a must buy. I have still to see Downriver Dead Men Go live but who knows I may stumble into a hazily lit, down-town bar someday and find them on stage. I hope so.
A Turneresque cover painting gives vague hint to the type of music and the details on the cover give minimum information. A quick bit of research and these Dutch lads describe their music as deeper, mesmerising, atmospheric and melancholy. If you know of David Lynch, director of ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Twin Peaks’, this album could have sound tracked any of these.
A dark evening, you enter the foyer of a private club greeted by a smiling girl all curls, curves and red lip gloss, she parts red velvet curtains and leads you into a dimly lit room furnished in deep red velour seating with tables. Smoke from cigars and slim cigarette holders hangs in the air. Whispered conversations, furtive glances across the hazy room and a small stage on which a band appears, the instrumental first track The Dying of the Light plays muted keys with the sound of crows and other birds echoing round the room. The conversations die and all eyes focus momentarily on the stage as you take your seat in a booth.
Dressed in a dinner jacket with open necked white shirt, the lead singer pulls up a stool to a small dim spotlight at the front of the stage as the band plug in. The singer rests on the edge of the stool with his guitar and with one foot on the floor for balance he grasps the vintage Shure microphone like a lover and pulls it towards his lips until they brush lightly together as the first track fades.
Acoustic guitar strums, and he begins to pour his heart out in a languid, sleepy voice. A well groomed woman gives a large man sat next to her at the table a determined look, shakes her head negatively and rises, pulling her hand from the sweaty grasp of his chubby, gold sovereign laden digits. Her silk dress slides between the tables as the music rises she’s Walking Away, and won’t be returning to him. The vocals and instruments echoing as she fades into the smoke and away through the curtains, into the foyer, where Miss Red Lip Gloss sits on a stool, distractedly filing her crimson co-ordinated nails .
She doesn’t notice the woman leave as she’s in a world of her own from which she wished she wouldn’t have to Wake Up. Drums are brushed and electric guitar flows with keyboards in sombre reflection as the third song drifts in to her consciousness with haunting brass sounds. This isn’t the direction in which she had seen her life going but at least she was safe here for now as no one knew her real identity and had food and lodging.
Back at the table the large man waves a weighty hand to a waitress. She teeters toward him on slim black stilettos, in short-skirted uniform, with a small pillbox hat held on her tightly fastened peroxide hair, a single spiral hangs to one side. She deposits a bottle of champagne on the ring stained table top and he waves her away without a glance.
He draws on a large cigar, exhaling the cloud toward the stage as he ponders the,beautiful intro and melancholy lyrics of the fourth song reflecting on his life, things would Never Change. There was a time he had loved the girl who had just left and he’d not been a bad man, but money, avarice and jealousy were now his only companions. She’d begged him to take her away from it all and they could live like the carefree young lovers they had once been but he craved other things and she had become merely a distraction.
The singer steps away from the microphone to briefly slake his burning throat with cool beer between strummed chords, washing away the smoke as the band play an instrumental piece. The gangster man feels a momentary twinge of grief as the memories and the Ghost of Caitlin are all he now has left of the relationship and the music swirls and eddies. Then regret is gone in the fleeting twinkle of a blonde’s eye as the waitress now catches his sight-line, maybe she’ll do for tonight. Just another desperate wanting to improve her situation lured easily by a fur coat and a few sparkly gems, which he can easily afford. No commitment, though he’ll promise the world and take what he wants, then have his driver discard her at the roadside the following morning amid the tumble-weed, futilely hoping it will eradicate the memory of his lost love.
Returning to the microphone and surveying the punters robed in fetid air, the band observe the roles played out, it’s just another night in the joint. As the singer stretches out the stiffness in his neck the band behind him bring in the title track Tides. The bass throbs, as it has throughout, a dulled pulsating heart pumping vibrations into the room, the drums the beating life. The subdued rhythms of the guitars with drawn out chords mourn to the lamenting keys and soundscapes created. The singer stares at the rotund man in the booth with red veined jowls and as the lyrics come to him he starts to sing again, a cautionary tale.
Following on the sweetly sombre instrumental Undertow mimics the roles in the room as clients indicate more drinks and nibbles, whilst waitresses scurry to accommodate, emptying ashtrays unobtrusively, hoping for generous tips to bolster their meagre wages. Business is good tonight. Ushered in by the choral accompaniment at the end of the track, a man in a wool suit and slim black tie parts the foyer curtains, two uniformed policemen accompany him. He steps forward with them, the broad brimmed trilby on his head pointing the way as they move toward the sovereign fingered gentleman. Everyone watches cautiously as they pass by, turning faces to shadow.
The band continue with a dark, atmospheric backing track to the performance unfolding as the words echo The Stone In My Heart to the retreating officers, as they lead the handcuffed sweating man. As they negotiate his sizeable bulk between the tables of the booths watched by their shady occupants, there but for the grace of…. She may not think so but the blonde waitress has escaped a humiliating experience and will have to wait for her real Prince Charming to save her from the monotony.
Her position however has not gone unnoticed by another. She has a delicate frail naïvety about her that begs to be taken away from this tainted existence and the singer smiles at the waitress as she passes. Her baby blue eyes widen and she blushes as she moves to task, glancing over as she flits between tables. Carpe Diem, seize the day, lift her misery. Nothing gained nothing lost, the singer turns to the band as the purported final track of the evening fades out on beautiful keys and looping chords and they nod in sage agreement.
A few light chords introduce bonus track, River, to a complete contrast as the band raise the tempo and the singer grins like a schoolboy at his fancy. A rocking drum beat picks up the bass and Coral like steel guitar cuts in western style with slide and jaunty organ. He holds her gaze as he plays and sings a promise of better things. The waitress sways to the up tempo as he moves off the stage across the dance-floor toward her in time to the driving keyboard and announcing his intentions, she smiles agreement, nods and he returns to the stage. Guitar swaggering in his hands with pause for effect the band slide out on a single distorted note and people make their way to the exit.
The band begin packing their instruments and as he bends to lock his guitar case a shadow falls by the singer. He looks round and there stands the waitress, hat discarded and coat in hands her smile as wide as her eyes. Picking up his guitar in his left hand he takes her left in his right and they make their way to the rear exit. They push open the back door and make for the band bus. It swings shut revealing a poster for this evenings entertainment, from the band, Downriver Dead Men Go and lists the members:
Andy de Zeeuw – drums/percussion
Gerrit Koekebakker – guitar/vocals
Fernandez Burton – bass
Peter van Dijk – keys/soundscapes
With airs of the Editors and Nosound for reference, the band may not be to everyone’s taste, but it has seeped into my brain and become one of my favourite albums of the year so far. If like me you are partial to a bout of emotionally dark, slow rock when the fancy takes, then I urge you to buy this. They could be an interesting prospect live.
