Human Bell is the near-eponymous project of Arbouretum front man Dave Heumann and longtime Lungfish bassist Nathan Bell, who don guitars here to converse with each other (and a few friends) in a bristling instrumental language. There are moments on this disc worthy of the Dirty Three or Calexico, but those associations don't linger long, and Human Bell's work is mostly engaging enough to keep us in its own gravitational pull.
Opener “A Change in Fortunes” functions as a warm-up for the more dynamic tracks that follow. Case in point: “Splendor and Concealment,” which begins with the deconstructive twang of a spaghetti western and hops to full alertness halfway through, picking up the pace while pursuing the knotty pact between repetition and inertia that drives this entire collaboration.
“Hymn Amerika” introduces a bluesy direness and disturbing percussion with a heaviness of drumming and riffing that summons Slint. It ends relatively early, at 3:26, perhaps because this sort of thing can't be sustained as long as Human Bell's gentler exercises. More spacey and unnerving still is the home-recorded “Ephaphatha (Be Opened),” featuring trumpet passages by Bell that are muffled and haunted, resembling wolves crying out in pain from a nearby mountain.
The nearly 10-minute “Hanging from the Rafters” tries such varied approaches that it surely qualifies as the album's all-in-one centerpiece, while the singing bowl in the background of “Outposts of Oblivion” is coolly ephemeral, but only accents the song's unsatisfying diffuseness. “The Singing Trees” resurrects the drums and sounds more rock-oriented than the rest, at least until reclining into a slow, fluttering fade-out that includes an interlude of dead air before sneaking back together for an unassuming encore to an album that can go from easygoing to prickly and back in a heartbeat.
