Denver only has about 60 cloudy days each year, and, because of its famed mile-high altitude, expect to get about 60 percent more ultraviolet rays when you outdoors there. In other words, the folks in Denver get some sun. A lot of sun.

Maybe that's why the Mile High City's underground's had such a fascination with darkness. From Slim Cessna and 16 Horsepower to The Denver Gentlemen and The VSS, which was based in nearby Boulder, Colo., Denver acts found more than its share of ways to work a dark aesthetic into their music. It's not a new thing, either, as The Soul Merchants, whose work's dragged out of obscurity for this release, show that in the shadow of the Rockies, Denver acts long found inventive ways to sneak the dark stuff into their work. And, like the slew of better-known Southern Gothic twangers and grim post-hardcore kids, The Soul Merchants didn't have to resort to Goth-rock cliches to do it.

Drenching a love of psychedelia in cloaks of shadowy atmospheres and spiky bursts of punk energy, The Soul Merchants negotiated a delicate peace between the keyboard-based head-trips of The Doors, the storm-front doom and gloom of The Birthday Party and the emotional distance of Joy Division. It's an equilibrium defined mostly by 1985-1987's hard-to-penetrate shadows, though The Soul Merchants punch through them with bursts of slashing riffs that'll scrape the eyeliner off any Goth-rock connotations that might come up with such a pedigree. At their best, the Merchants sound like a worldly -- and oddly well adjusted -- take on Nick Cave's Birthday Party psychoses. "Save My Soul" sounds like Ian Curtis talked the rest of the Division into taking up Los Angeles-style hardcore, resulting in grinding, lurching guitars with all the cold-blooded terror of post-punk's most dismal moments. "Mental Clay" lays on the psychedelic influences, as swirling keys add a dose of romanticism to the dark that's stuck somewhere between the era's Cure singles and a trashy, rock underground. There's a hidden sophistication that underlies the post-punk psychedelia of "Crown of Glory," hinting at a love for middle-years Damned filtered through a distinctively American no-nonsense attitude that puts the band's punk roots clearly on display.

Even when the tracks on 1985-1987, all of which are culled from the band's four-track cassette-only releases, it's not the conceptual dark-punk nightmare it could be. Mainly, the band just gets tied up in keys that sound that sound a little too lost in a hippie psychedelic haze for their own good. "Attics" could be Ray Manzarek's ill-advised attempt to bridge the gap between The Doors and the X albums he produced, and "Valentine's Day" gets lost in synthed-out world of analog keyboards.

Darkness and Denver have long gone hand-in-hand, and there's few bands in the Mile High City's shadow gallery as confident with its position in the gloom as Soul Merchants were. For every bit of Southern Gothic chaos or post-hardcore gloom you harvest from Denver, be thankful that acts like The Soul Merchants planted the seeds of gloom in the city's underground.

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The harpsichord-like keys laces "Attics" with antiquity we all find ourselves in when roaming an old house. "Johanna" swirls. "Black Rain" delivers. "Blue Light" and "Beating Heart" can be heard on the MySpace site. Moore and Black excel when weaving light and dark vocals. And 50 words isn't nearly enough when describing this cd (or any other) Just buy it!

posted by JBegley DarkwaveProd on Jun 05, 2008