A Winged Victory for the Sullen

The Sugar Club, Dublin

As Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid) takes to the fairy-lit stage, we wonder if the show might start early. But no, Wiltzie is supporting himself with another project, the “not well known” Sleepingdog with Chantal Acda. It is all cascading beauty, with Acda’s pure vocal complementing Wiltzie’s aching guitar, and they move lightly between songs such as

Scary Movie

and

Polish Love Song

, filtering piano and effects to round out the fleshy beauty. “Two more songs then you can rock with the metal,” Acda sweetly kids.

Then Dustin O’Halloran and AWVFTS’s string section (comprising cello, viola and violin) arrive, and from the prayerful, organ-led

Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears

to the melancholy piano-based

We Played Some Open Chords

. . . , this becomes philosophical music, communicating truths and huge questions (true love, death) without uttering a word, and by performing Arvo Pärt’s

Fratres for Strings

, they show they are in a dialogue that matters.

This melding of ambient, classical and drone quickly becomes poetry.

Minuet for a Cheap Piano

’s simple melody is heartbreaking (as is the delicately opulent

Symphony Pathétique

), and

All Farewells are Sudden

stretches out like a newborn, squinting at the day, with Wiltzie’s protean guitar-effects and birdsong creating a vitality that is the lifeblood of this project, aided through visuals that range from da Vinci-like renderings of the body to a looming moon.

It is easy to forget there is a world outside these four walls, so transporting is the music, and there is a genuine sense of disappointment when it appears things are finished – “but we only have one CD”, O’Halloran wryly beseeches, before they unfurl the encore to rapturous applause.

Wiltzie and O’Halloran met by chance in Bologna in 2007, after a Sparklehorse concert that Wiltzie was part of. Tragically, Mark Linkous didn’t live to see the riches this collaboration would draw down, but as the subject of their astonishing, moving elegies,

Requiem for the Static King Parts One

and

Two

, he is part of it, this winged victory.