Awol Marine heralds the record's heartstring-yanking, veritably artistic proem as a visceral hiss slithers beyond Hadreas' elegiac piano refrains and affecting trill. As foaming static subsides, a moment's silence enhances the overriding clarity of the segueing Normal Song on which Hadreas pleads us to hold his hand and pray for him, for he is "afraid". Rousing in every which way, it's enough to instantaneously send kneecaps crumbling helplessly to the floor in deferential praise and genuine consternation for if you'd ever regarded Hadreas as something of an intangible artist, by this point in the record he's already wormed his way into your heart, mind, and every waking thought. Immutably lugubriously, he continues: "Comfort the girl / Help her understand / No memory no matter how sad / And no violence no matter how bad / Can darken the heart / Or tear it apart." These are sentiments to wrench the most emotionless guts from the fleshiest abdomen and if they refer to the realisation of a transitional sexual orientation, well, they're phrased rather more gracefully and moreover poetically than the surreptitious inclusion of Diana Ross' I'm Coming Out on some carefully constructed mixtape. Again all mellifluousness recedes to expose a gentle whisper of quietude immortalised, before ever more morose keys tumble out from the listening experience like carmine blood gushing from the deepest incision in the darkest chamber of Hadreas' heart.
Often sounding akin to Sufjan were Stevens bereft of all confidence Hadreas is, somewhat inexplicably, all the better for it and Put Your Back N 2 It irrefutably increases in stature as its state of well being seems to gradually decline over an engrossing half hour. While No Tear – overly evocative of Antony and the Johnsons' more glammed-up slabs of glumness – disillusions and Dirge proves just that and all too dolefully so, here we've an LP with as many towering peaks as the Adirondack Mountains, the likes of the spiritual and soulful Take Me Home and the wistful and wallowing All Waters protruding through allegorical cloaks of cloud. The tenderly hymnal 17 too stands tall, whilst simultaneously proffering a rather squirmy and discombobulating listen with a particular, particularly well-documented lyric sticking viscously to any and every interpretation. With Hadreas indisputably not harping on about wayward seafarers nor a certain illustrious Arsenal shot-stopper strung up on his figurative fence, the self-deprecation is a slightly unwelcome return to the irrepressible dejection of the debut, Learning. Yet while still revelling in gloom, it's the desolate humidity and devastating humility of Floating Spit and the sparse, Amazing Grace-indebted closer Sister Song that ensure Put Your Back N 2 It shacks up in memory and irrespective of however much of Hadreas' vertebral column went into it, expect a shiver or two to ripple up your backbone.
