Siberia: Harm’s Way

Sometimes haunting, other times beautiful, Siberia’s latest effort, Harm’s Way is full of vivid, fragmented imagery about life, death, loss and redemption. The record begins all guitar riffs and chorus and closes with floating drum loops and sampling. What occurs in between is a collection of dark and stylish songs that live on the ends of Randy Farmer’s voice and John Mitchell’s distant guitars. Mitchell’s songs simmer with equal parts restraint and urgency while Farmer nearly whispers through many of her lyrics. The two equally impressive aspects of Harm’s Way take the listener on an imaginative journey.

Siberia’s dream world begins to take shape on the second track, “Virus”. Simple acoustic guitar lines set the tone before giving way to overly-distorted, distant guitars that anchor the chorus. Farmer’s lyrics, “Hardwood floors a madman’s gaze / Water spilling from her veins”, are typical of the troubled images she uses to illustrate the conflict in her songs. In addition to suicide and madness, other frequently recurring images include blood, earth, water, and poverty. Whether it’s a dirty floor, dilapidated sofas and cars, bathtubs or broken glass, it seems Farmer’s entire past is an impoverished house of ruined loves and bitter dreams. Redemption is escaping; and if escaping means death (her own or someone else’s) then it also means a rebirth, and she’s OK with that.

Not all of Farmer’s lyrics are as bleak as those in “Virus”. She offers momentary breaks from the depression on “Vessel” and “Sleep”. “Vessel” is the first hint that the album is more than hopeless dreams. Once the victim, the narrator becomes the heroine on “Vessel.” “Didn’t I kiss the ground where you once fell / Bare against the jagged shells / Didn’t I hold your hand in hell”, Farmer sings. While not the most overtly optimistic lyrics ever put to paper, they indicate a strength and compassion that many of the lyrics on the album eschew for more bleak tones.

Although most of the music and lyrics on Harm’s Way sound influenced by New York’s gritty and dark basement bars or late night streets, Mitchell’s slide guitars and subtle acoustic touches provide traces of Americana throughout. On Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat”, Mitchell’s smoke-filled guitars and Farmer’s half-spoken lyrics breathe their own life into the song without abandoning the original. Siberia use Dylan’s stark lyrical imagery to escape from consuming New York streets to the overcast skies and deserted landscapes of the Midwest.

With so much in the way of dark lyrics and music to match, it would have been only too easy to overindulge in their new direction, making the album a pit of quicksand emotion and drum machines. Instead, Siberia opted to keep the album sonically sparse, allowing the listener to float on the surface of its dream world, rather than drown in it. Harm’s Way offers enough emotion and imagery to allow the listener to reach down and touch its world for a time before drifting off to another, more personal world, and back again.