Pillars and Tongues

"Pillars and Tongues’ music always has one foot in the avant-garde, while never completely abandoning pop, which in this case is gloomy, dark, and dreamy, almost cinematic, evoking pictures of lost and doomed landscapes. The Pass and Crossings is close to nothing contemporary, a truly outstanding piece of sonic art." -Henning Lahmann, No Fear of Pop "With just three members, Pillars and Tongues manages to craft powerful folk abstractions and interwoven, trance-inducing vocal dynamics. Both composed and improvisational, these shifting forms evoke spiritual vibes in their soulful essence, heavenly harmonies, and repeated patterns." -Alarm Magazine, "This Weeks Best Albums" " [A] bizarre slew of haltering 'n faltering wilderness drone ballads” -Julian Cope "Much has been written about music that moves people, be it on an emotional, physical and/or sometimes spiritual level. There's a little less to be found for music that stills them, stops them where they stand, keeping them in place from first to last note, but it's still frequent enough for the use of words like stunned, entranced or mesmerised to be commonly-used descriptors for music that affects the listener on a slightly different level. This is all very well and good, except when both of these descriptions happen to only vaguely capture the music in hand, such as that crafted by the Pillars And Tongues trio." -Angie Mack, [sic] Magazine "The recent return of gothic sensibilities to popular music has been a strange one. Artists like Zola Jesus, Chelsea Wolfe and Former Ghosts seemed to appear practically out of nowhere, and their recent success has been just as inexplicable. This is the changing face of the dark. This is where the eerie side of pop was apparently hiding these past few years, and it's this same strange alcove where Chicago three-piece, Pillars and Tongues, draw the somber yet incessant energy [ . . . ] In the best moments, [Pillars and Tongues'] spiritualism seems to barely camouflage a deep chasm of sexuality and animosity." -Regan Healey, Windy City Rock "Recording much of their material live, their antecedents are as modern as drone and as old as early American folk, though with the latter they're often stretching the definition of the genre. . . . it's hard to believe Lay of Pilgrim Park is the work of just three people in the same room, and their roles are so fluid it's hard to pick out where one member's contributions start and another ends. The album's abrupt changes, deliberate silences, and movements rather than verses and choruses feel almost more classical than folk (or jazz, or indie, or anything else they might be considered). . . . a tightly focused album-length piece" -Jason Crock, Pitchfork Watercourse's waters course but the light remains behind you every way you turn.