REVIEW: THE PICTUREBOOKS – THE HANDS OF TIME (2019)

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Fynn Claus Grabke and Philipp Mirtschink are more than a band, they are a band of brothers if you like. The duo are The Picturebooks, but they are friends first. They make their instruments from vintage stuff, they repair and build their motorbikes in their studio-cum-garage, and they are assisted, mostly, by Fynn’s dad Claus.

But the treadmill gets to even those as close as that. Relentless touring – 350 shows in the last couple of years – and the pressure of doing that leads to a bit of a burn out. They nearly weren’t a band at all before 2014’s “Imaginary Horse” until they regrouped in in the garage,  and before the writing process began for what would become “The Hands Of Time” they did something similar.

The results are incredible. But then they always have been. What they haven’t been as this varied.

Where The Picturebooks have previously done primal as if it were second nature, on “….Time” they have a much more nuanced approach.

It starts in plaintive fashion. Grabke on his own, just his voice with a desolate wail almost, on “Horse Of Fire”, there is a something of the old school chain gangs of dustbowl 19th century America it makes for a jarring opening.

“Howling Wolf” is more like the stuff they normally do – and yes I’ll say it – better than anyone else. But for the first time, perhaps, you’d best not second guess the boys.

There is a harmonica riff to usher in the brilliant “Like My World Explodes” and whilst it is resolutely proud of its blues roots, by the end there’s a piano tinkle and soul-filled vocals, and the overall vibe, honestly, isn’t far from Bruce Springsteen at one point.

The title whips up a delta storm, but does so more acoustically than before, and there appears to be more thought and less instinct about things here. There is even  a dark, but slightly jazz, sound about the metronomic “The Day The Thunder Arrives”. Nothing on their other records has ever cast them in this light before.

“Electric Nights” even has a kind of buzz, a hum If you like, that recalls Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club a little, but its “Rain” that really makes you sit up and take notice. A ballad, for goodness sake, but one that is very much done on their own terms. First of all the music sounds like it is from an old Western movie, and then the lyrics are full of ominous imagery: “have you heard the rain will come?” enquires Grabke, “to wash away the things we’ve done…..”. It is a wonderful track.

It does, to be fair, trail in the wake of the absolute jewel that is “You Can’t Let Go”. For the first time they use a guest here and Chrissie Hynde absolutely smashes it out of the park. “I Got You Babe” this is not, but dear me, it is incredible.

Just for fun, “Lizard” adds something of their old unhinged stuff to proceedings, and “Tell Me Lies” sounds like it is carrying the weight of the world on its considerable shoulders, before “The Rising Fall” broods in apocalyptic fashion. Don’t believe me? Try this for a first line: “every once in a while, I get this aching thought/that a desperate child is going to kill us all.”

It is indicative, perhaps of the fact that nothing was off limits this time around.

Mixing things up a bit seems to have been the desire here. Yes, The Picturebooks want to be still the same band they’ve always been, and yes, they want to keep the same hard-work ethos, the DIY elements, and no there still isn’t a band that sounds like them, but things had to change after all these years.

And sometimes change is good. “The Hands Of Time” is the sound of one of the most innovative bands around blurring the edges.

Rating 9/10

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