Planning For Burial – ‘Below The House’

There is nothing about the music of Planning For Burial that could be deemed conventional; at least not in terms of style. For Thom Wasluck there are no boundaries or genre confines to adhere to with his art, owing him the freedom to create a sound unlike any other. Blending elements of drone, doom, indie-rock, and shoegaze, Planning For Burial has always been an uncompromising prospect, and ‘Below The House’ is no exception.

Recorded in the confines of Wasluck’s childhood home in Pennsylvania, which he returned to after years of living in New Jersey, he immersed himself in the mundane emptiness that came with daily routine. The record speaks of solitude, isolation and sorrow and that’s before you have looked at the back-story of ‘Below The House’. It sounds, feels and even smells like despair, painting bleak pictures, as ugly, twisted images manifest before you.

Yet ‘Below the House’ is no pity party or cry for attention. It barely feels like catharsis. It is a projection of the human condition through a bleak and desolate soundscape. Be it the monolithic wall of distortion that aurally punishes you through ‘Whiskey and Wine’, or the heart-wrenching narrative of ‘Warmth Of You’, in which Wasluck declares, “I wanted you, I needed you,” over an incandescent drone, ‘Below The House’ is an emotional endurance test.

While each composition is vocally kept to a minimum, at least when it is audible and not buried amongst the oppressive noise of ‘Somewhere In The Evening’, it relies heavy on instrumentation to do the talking. It speaks like a soundtrack to a movie you haven’t seen, allowing you to follow Walsuck as he transmits to tape the sounds in his head. In the tradition of bands like Have A Nice Life and Wreck & Reference, who also call The Flenser home, ‘Below The House’ is more than just a record: it is a journey.

It isn’t all blistering cacophony for the duration, though. ‘Threadbare’ is sullen and softly picked, with melodious keys and bells, only giving way to low-end drone at its cadence. There are also two haunting instrumental passages that segue the latter half of the record, and the title track relies on disjointed acoustic guitars to bring ‘Below The House’ to a close.

There’s no doubt that ‘Below The House’ is the most refined Planning For Burial record and, while far from clean cut or polished, it does have a more welcoming nature than that of the previous full length, ‘Leaving’. It is, however, a body of work bereft of goodness, tailor made for lonely, loveless nights.

GLEN BUSHELL