Cathedral (Castanets album)
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| Cathedral | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
_cover_art.jpg) | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | October 19, 2004[1] | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 33:26 | |||
| Label | Asthmatic Kitty | |||
| Castanets chronology | ||||
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Cathedral is an album by Castanets, released on October 19, 2004 through Asthmatic Kitty.[1][3] Part of the album was recorded live and includes a dozen local musicians. Led by Raymond Raposa, this is the band's first foray into studio recording, which he described as 'a really protracted, uncomfortable process'.[4] The release features guest-vocals by Brigit DeCook and Liz Janes.[5] The material was partly recorded in a remote cabin in Northern California.[1] Raposa had planned to publish a novel to accompany the album, which failed to surface.[4]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [6] |
| Pitchfork | 8.5/10[5] |
| PopMatters | Favorable[7] |
| No Ripcord | 9/10[8] |
Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork.com compared Raposa's writing on Cathedral to that of the poet Seamus Heaney. She described the album as a collection of 'deep gothic ballads' of 'country music [that] should sound like death, and more specifically, death-by-murky-submersion'.[5] Heather Phares of allmusic.com referred to the religious overtones of the album, describing it as 'spiritual searching' and as having 'a certain dark theatricality'.[6] Justin Cober-Lake at popmatters.com described Cathedral as having 'lo-fi production [which] helps develop the darkness of Castanets’ music. [It] sounds as if it was recorded in the desert at night, which suits the pre-technology fears of the album'.[7] Jon Pit from Dusted Magazine called it 'another welcome installment in the folk renaissance' although he described Raposa's vocals as 'lacklustre'.[9] In December 2004, American webzine Somewhere Cold ranked Cathedral No. 8 on their 2004 Somewhere Cold Awards Hall of Fame list.[10]
In 2005, Stylus Magazine's Andrew Gaerig reflected that Cathedral "was Americana in the most literal sense. Though certainly not without precedent, Cathedral owed no major debt to Americana’s touchstones: blues, country, and folk". He further named it "a finding-America story that shedded wide-eyed mythology in favor of swampy hymns and boisterous noise workouts. Cathedral had all of the dressings of a straight-from-the-womb, fully formed indie rock classic—shrugging off considerable baggage, sidestepping genre pigeonholes—but the album’s relentless heavy heart was a downer, and it didn’t help that Raposa's scratchy folk whisper had trouble teasing the melody out of his compositions."[2]
