Sprain - The Lamb As Effigy (Black Vinyl)

Across the 96 minutes of The Lamb as Effigy or 300 XOXOXOs for a Spark Union with the Darling Divine, Sprain’s Alexander Kent curls and shrinks and shrivels. He is consumed with guilt the way that a building is consumed with fire. Sometimes he throws it off in a fit of rage or pique, strengthened by the incredible, ugly heaviness his band generates. Sometimes, he cowers in the beneficent presence of the patient, gorgeous drones that hum the album into a temporary state of serenity. But mostly, Kent ruminates in long, uncomfortable, occasionally tedious passages, the urgency of his emotion goading him into singing more than he seems to want to. He strikes out at God and at the titular Lamb, who may or may not be the same being, but every dart he hurls skyward inevitably returns to pierce his head. He is Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, trying to tamp down his anxiety long enough to declare that a criminal’s conscience will inevitably cause him to suffer.