Now you know Heaven: Haale, No Ceiling

My first encounter with Haale was over either NPR or WFMU during an in-studio performance and interview sometime before I had a CD player installed in my car. At the time, I made a note of what I was listening to, found the band on myspace, and added them. Following that, I casually forgot about them until about four weeks ago, when I noticed there was a full-length release scheduled to hit stores for the 18^th of March. So, I skipped over to Haale’s website, ordered the new album, and sat waiting for it to come in the mail.

That wait was extended by some gorilla at the local USPS office using my package as a Frisbee. Or maybe Homeland Insecurity decided to snag it since the artist in question is of Iranian descent and we could be durty turrists trying to spread chaos in the land of the free. Whatever the situation, it didn’t land in my hands until last Friday, after having sent courteous emails to the right people to have it sent again.

No Ceiling is the debut full-length following on the heels of a pair of EPs released in 2007, and comes off as a blend of Alternative, Psychedelic, and traditional Middle Eastern music. Band leader Haale Gafori has a thing for Sufi mystic poets: three tracks on No Ceiling feature lyrics by Rumi (sung in Persian). Two other tracks feature words by Persian writers; “Hastee” was written by Forough Farrokhzad, a famous Iranian poetess, and “Town on the Sea” features Persian lyrics by Marzie Nejad, who I can’t find much information for online. The rest of the lyrics are by Haale, and they are quite good. Couple the words with her fantastic voice and layer them over enthusiastic and powerful instrumentation and you have a recipe for one of the most pleasant albums I’ve had the joy to hear thus far this year.

Through the 43 minutes and 39 seconds between the opening of “Middle of Fire” to the end of “Town on the Sea,” the potent spiritual nature of No Ceiling boxes your ears repeatedly. But, gently. It’s a beautiful album, and I mean beautiful in a way that is hard to describe. It just… makes me feel good. Light. Not enlightened in any sense of the word but definitely facing the sunrise with a more positive outlook than I usually do. My friends can attest to my natural pessimism and tendency to reach for the weirdest, darkest music on the shelf, but, as my earlier review this week shows, there are lines that even I must draw. There are no lines to draw with this album, save those written and sung.

In some ways, No Ceiling reminds me of some of Dead Can Dance’s material. The comparison is limited, however, to the spiritual nature of both groups and maybe a bit of the trance-like sound. Something in the back of my jaded little brain keeps jumping up and down screaming that I’ve heard something like Haale’s music before and that she’s not all that original. Unfortunately, I can’t recall exactly what triggers that reaction except from choice DCD tunes, so I’m going to tell the little voice to shut up unless it can justify leveling the double-barreled shotgun named “Derivative” in Haale’s general direction.

My favorite tracks include “Middle of Fire,” “No Ceiling,” “Ay Dar Shekasteh,” and “Hastee.” “Off Duty Fortune Teller” is a bit of a bluesy folk track that stands out for being very down-to-earth among songs that take you to the Heavens; incidentally, it’s my least favorite track on the album. But even then, it’s not bad, merely not agreeable to my tastes.

While I have nothing but praise for the music, I do have one complaint about the album overall. On the website, they made it sound like the accompanying 16-page booklet “with ink drawings by Kevork Mourad, photos, lyrics, and translations” was a big deal. While I am thankful that they included this feature (Mourad’s art is the perfect complement to Haale’s music and I am thankful for being introduced to his work), I feel like calling special attention to it as a selling point is rather annoying. Now, call me an obtuse relic, but I remember an era when all albums had little booklets with lyrics and photographs and drawings of varying degrees of artistic skill, quite often far below that which is displayed within No Ceiling. In that era, saying “This CD has a booklet!” carried as much weight as saying it came in a case. I suppose my complaint is more with the record industry as a whole since it seems providing a multi-page liner booklet with lyrics is anachronistic in the eyes of the bigwigs. We’ve gotten to the point where anything included in the deal other than the disc and its case is considered a major selling point. How much does it really cost to add this little feature? It’s not like the prices have changed much when I go to the store to pick up the latest.

I can accept certain cost-cutting measures to offset losses due to digital piracy or whatever the reason is this week for poor music sales. Digipaks: fine. Cardboard sleeves: okay, its got a retro feel, like sliding a nice piece of vinyl out and admiring the play of light shining in the grooves. But when they take away the lyric sheet and cut back on most of the album art, there’s little incentive to actually buy the CD as opposed to simply bootlegging it over peer-to-peer. What’s next? If they keep cutting down on the quality of the product, we can look forward to picking up CDs sold in nothing but shrink wrap, or a folded paper envelope with nothing but the artist and album title hand-written on the outer flap by someone that is not only English illiterate, but illiterate in his native tongue as well.

I seem to have gotten sidetracked. Anyway, No Ceiling is a delightful musical experience with excellent accompanying art and is worth the expense. It’s on a limited print run, so your next step should be to go to Haale’s website and buy it should anything I said here strike you as enticing.



Haale’s website (buy the album here) and myspace page