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Laughing Stock — Shelter
(Apollon Records ARP079, 2024, CD / LP / DL)

by Henry Schneider, Published 2024-10-12

Shelter Cover art

Norwegian rock band Laughing Stock is back with their sixth album, their next concept album, Shelter. Shelter is an organization that promises a new and better life in harmony with nature, helping you forget who you once were and the machinery of the life that is slowly bringing you down. What a happy and uplifting message! As with their previous album, they enlisted help from an experienced British musician, Tim Bowness of No Man, as well as Anders Buaas, flautist Morten Clason (The Windmill), and trumpeter Terje Johannesen. Laughing Stock’s lineup remains the same: Håvard Enge, Jan Erik Kirkevold Nilsen, and Jan Mikael Sørensen, with Sørensen also in the production booth. The music is a mixture of classic rock, ambience, aggressive dissonance, and prog rock. One high point on the album is “Waterfall,” a lovely soothing Eno-esque instrumental. Another outstanding track is the aggressive riffing of “Sticks and Stones” with the vocalist sounding a bit like Ozzy Osbourne. “In You” I found to be an oddball song — it starts out with such promise, with its shimmering sound that morphs into a middle-of-the-road ballad, back to its shimmering ambience, and then suddenly harsh dissonance which remarkably improves the song along with the vocal harmonies. Tim Bowness helped pen the album closer, “The Flood,” as well as providing vocals, which also appears in an edited version called “Memories.” Laughing Stock found pleasure working with him, but to my ears Tim’s performance is quite different from the dreamy shoegazing introspective music I am used to hearing from him, so I am a bit disappointed with the results. But to each his own.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Tim Bowness, Laughing Stock, Anders Buaas

More info
http://laughingstock1.bandcamp.com/album/shelter

 

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