Moss Icon - Liburnum Wits End Liberation Fly

Moss Icon - Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (Vermiform, January 1993)

Back in the 80s, the scene grew weary of the clear-cut hardcore formula -- the sloganeering, the simplicity and ferocity of the riffs, the compact song structure -- and sought out new ways to liberate it from within. They expanded the sound by inviting more melody, more movement within the songs, more introspection. Moss Icon hail from Annapolis, MD, just near enough Washington, DC to get grouped into the emerging post-hardcore scene albeit without getting signed by Dischord. Both of their recorded LPs Lyburnum Wits End Liberation Fly (1993) and It Disappears (1994) were released after they disbanded in ‘91. The band played several reunion shows and in 2012 saw their complete discography reissued by Temporary Residence Limited but until now Moss Icon never released new music. 

I love how intricate Lyburnum … sounds. »Mirror« opens with Tonie Joy’s sharp, quickly strum power chords which are met by Monica DiGialleonardo’s warm, wavy bass line before they overpower them. Jonathan Vance comes in with a vocal delivery which stutters through its melody, before it breaks out into a clear, powerful shout at the end of the song. Throughout the record, Vance isn’t shy from letting his voice slip in the background of the mix, clear and tangible and on beat, but content in thinking along. The narrator is caught up in its own consciousness, breaking through with the gospel once one of his realizations is met by the divine or whatever comes in its place. “It was only a misunderstanding of words … that doesn’t mean that it was not good.” || “Would you talk to me as if I could be real to you?” 

             

Throughout the album, the prominence of the bass is striking. Whatever kinship one presumes to Joy Division starts here. In the closer »Happy (Unbound Glory)« DiGialleonardo first mirrors and then takes over the riff from Joy, while his guitar distorts into a haunting reverb. They circle each other for a while, negotiating a truce, before the whole band comes back full force in the final twenty seconds. The whole album just accumulates these type of details. A proto-emo provocation: well into »Locket«, Marcus Laurence fills in an in-your-face snare salvo leading into Vance delivering the song with a scream and a chorus. The opening acoustic guitar on »Divinity Cove« is soon numbed by the riffing yet the pain remains. On »Kick The Can«, Vance gives fully over to Joy whose riffs switch from suspended yearning to a triumphant howl, punctuated by some forlorn cymbal hits.  It all builds to »Lyburnum – Wit’s End (Liberation Fly)« in which space is shared equally, each member given its moment on the first half, before the band emerges as a full unit. It’s not an epic, but a Kenneth Anger like evocation. Vance sings the song like he would deliver a sermon, never shifting his delivery but slowly building presence. The good with the evil. The loud with the quiet. All the beauty and the bloodshed. “Let us take up our hymn books and sing” || “Now is never!”