IPECAC RECORDINGS
Like a butterfly with impeccable music taste, San Francisco’s Oxbow slipped another leg out of their cult-status chrysalis on album eight. Love’s Holiday stacked noise rock beside empyrean piano ballads and bluesy flights of jazz and fancy, pulsating, bludgeoning, hurting. They seemed intense as ever, Eugene S. Robinson’s wails and croaks abetting the tone –but something had changed. More energy was spent on heart-tugging than nosebreaking, with sorrow –Lingua Ignota guest vocal, anyone? –and hookiness in equal measure. Unbelievable.