Entrance

Prayer of Death

(Tee Pee)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Maybe Ben Gibbard would honestly follow you into the dark if the situation arose, but Entrance’s Guy Blakeslee seems downright enthusiastic about scooping you up and charging off into The Great Beyond.  Prayer of Death is pretty much the perfect explanatory title for the lanky troubadour’s fourth record, and it’s more a prayer of celebration than sorrow.  “I want to die without no fear,” he moans on the title track, with his cracking voice and reverb-embracing production making him sound like he’s already got one foot on the other side.  “I want to die rejoicing.”

The thematic shift helps Prayer of Death pack a more jarring punch than its predecessor, 2004’s Wandering Stranger, which, while containing a number of memorable tracks and lo-fi blues travelogues, was more modest in its aim (soundtracking your restless journey from Montana to Arizona, for instance, rather than your journey from life into death). 

Unless all of this lyrical intensity and song muscle and deeply-felt blues are all elaborate subterfuge for Blakeslee’s true intentions: death is the ultimate escape from a woman who tries to pin him down.  “I shouldn’t waste my freedom on your worries,” he grouses in the opening line of “Valium Blues.”  A song later, he opens with “Pretty baby, don’t you know my style?  You can’t control me ‘cuz I’m young and wild.”

Okay, there’s (thankfully) more to it than that.  The title track harkens closer to the spirit of Blakeslee’s earlier outings, with its straight-up DIY approach to the blues.  Elsewhere, he embarks on more of a full-band approach, as on the blazing opener “Grim Reaper Blues.”  Most of the tracks feature a thick arrangement of instrumentation—most prominently return collaborator Paz Lenchantin’s dramatic violin (Lenchantin is also co-credited with Blakeslee for “album concept”).  There are memorable riffs a-plenty, too, but Blakeslee’s voice—and the conviction behind it—is still the engine that makes the Entrance train tear down the tracks.  Sometimes he’s so overcome that words fail him completely, as when he breaks into a soaring chant on “Pretty Baby.”