Bottomless Pit: Blood Under The Bridge

Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen have turned much of the turbulence of their previous band, Silkworm, into conflicted calm in Bottomless Pit. Blood Under The Bridge, the band’s second album, makes listeners wait to hear all the ragged power that remains in the pair’s songwriting. The opener, “Winterwind.” pleasantly bumps along for nearly seven minutes, as if afraid to press too hard on a tender bruise, and the drum-free “Rhinelander” meditates in circles on how there’s “so much time / there’s no such thing as too much time.” Unlike 2007’s Hammer Of The Gods, Blood takes plenty of time getting to the cathartic payoffs, and frankly might have been better off swapping a couple songs with 2008’s Congress EP. Still, the final three tracks pay off massively. “Is It A Ditch” is a swaying, wry outburst on par with Silkworm’s “Don’t Make Plans This Friday.” “Q.E.D.,” with a chorus that serenely ponders boa constrictors’ feeding habits, might be the best of Bottomless Pit’s quieter tracks so far. The album also works like a setup for one final ambush: “38 Souls” has Cohen unleashing a startlingly good vocal and a guitar solo full of expert chromatic slippage. Bottomless Pit has found something resembling peace in a lot of its songs, but “38 Souls” leaves off with the feeling that Cohen and Midgett still have some nasty, troubling work ahead of them.