Porta's Listen...Ola Podrida - Belly of the Lion (2009)

"Slowcoustic"
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Ola Podrida - Belly of the Lion (2009)

by popmatters

David Wingo, the man behind Ola Podrida, has clearly learned a thing or two from his past, back when he used to score films for his pal David Gordon Green. Slipping in the subtle evocative sound, establishing a sonic landscape, expanding out into swells of emotion or coiling into near silence—Belly of the Lion gives us Wingo in complete control of all these effective moves. He’s built on the hushed tension of the first, mostly acoustic, Ola Podrida record, and built it up into an affecting rock record.

These are songs meant to soak in and spread, like deep red stains. Wingo places crashing cymbals and restrained drumming off in the distance, leaving space for a thick bed of guitars to coat everything in haze. And while there’s surely some shoegaze influence to those layers, the record doesn’t constantly rely on grinding feedback for effect. “Your Father’s Basement” pits acoustic chords against faint, echoed riffs. “The Closest We Will Ever Be” is built on clear, twangy strings of notes that needle through restrained, overcast distortion. “Donkey”, perhaps the best song of the bunch, starts with just banjo and Wingo’s whispery vocals. But as he becomes trapped and penned in, and he begins to shout “In the belly of the lion, I’ve been trying to breath through his nose,” an organic, buzzing hum swells up behind him, driving home the claustrophobia while Wingo is reduced to wordless shouts.

All through the record, Wingo succeeds at creating these affecting, gauzy rooms of sound. These are songs that are shimmering but never precious, beautiful but not immaculate. The people Wingo sings about, whether himself or those around him, are fighting tooth and nail for some kind of love, sometimes merely physical, but always necessary. That momentum, the hard wanting they go through, makes these songs sound tacky with sweat and, particularly in the first half, wild-eyed and yearning, even at their most bittersweet and quiet, as on “We All Radiant.”

And while this sound carries the album, the commitment to that overall feel takes something away from the songs themselves. After the crescendo of “Donkey”, the album settles into a quiet buzz. There’s still the same warm haze working, but the songs slow down, and that irrepressible energy suddenly feels sapped. “Monday Morning” glides along quietly until grinding notes pull it apart. “Lakes of Wine” sounds like an updated, and yes improved, track from his solo record. It’s bedroom folk, but there’s yawning keys that give it much needed atmosphere. So while these kinds of songs work on their own, once they start to follow each other, the album loses the momentum it worked so hard to earn. Even when “Roomful of Sparrows”, with its towering guitar attack, tries to recapture the grit and sweat of the first half of the record, it can’t quite pull that off on its own.

Still, this whole discussion of the overall movement of the record isn’t all critical.

Belly of the Lion

is, front to back, a compelling sound. It’s a true testament to Wingo’s musicianship that this record sounds like it was recorded by a full, heavily populated band, when in fact he recorded it mostly alone. So there’s a lot to be said for what he’s accomplished here, but it does feel like the sequencing here, that soundtrack penchant of his, may have gotten in the way of making this record better than it is already. There are nine distinct, quite beautiful tracks on this record. But a few of them end up getting lost in this murky landscape, and in those moments the expansion of the record inverts itself into a slight limitation.

Submitted by Josh Keller

Austin-based musician David Wingo is back with the the hauntingly beautiful Belly of the Lion, the second LP under his Ola Podrida moniker. The disc follows up the textured acoustic melodies of his self titled debut and shows the expansive depths Wingo is capable of. The simple arrangements are deceptively dramatic and soak over the listener like waves throughout the album’s nine songs. It is ultimately a record that can, and should, be digested as a whole, with each track serving as a piece to a larger puzzle. Wingo’s day job as a film score composer is evident with the striking rise and fall of the 36 minute album as the deft instrumentation and somber lyrics paint somber and serene portraits. The music is restrained without losing a sense of emotion, in a way that only someone who has complete control of the craft would be able to do. While there are no songs that knock you off your feet like “Jordanna” did on his debut, Belly of the Lion is a truly solid album from start to finish. Its soft textures and organic feel prove Wingo to be an artist than can create music that is essentially simple and straight forward, yet still deeply profound.

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Is essentially simple!

-the portastylistic