Grab a dictionary and look up “poet.” You’ll come across a definition like “person who has great ability to feel and express beauty.” Look further down for “poetry” and you’ll get an entry along the lines of “the expression of beautiful or elevated thought, imagination or feeling.”
…as the Poets Affirm, an art rock sextet from Ottawa, create one of the most beautiful and elevated aural experiences out there with their album The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch. An instrumental masterpiece, the CD is part orgiastic, part meditative and entirely captivating. As their album title suggests–a reference to Lewis Carroll– …as the Poets Affirm seize you with the encroachment of xylophones, muted trumpets, percussion and various stringed instruments.
Exuding the heavy moodiness and the jolting rhythm of poets Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg, …as the Poets Affirm tap into the enthralling and enigmatic world of verse, even without any accompanying lyrics. With incredibly poetic songs titles such as “A Lie Told Before Breakfast” and “The Bourgeois Dream of Some White Trash Kid,” The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch will be the new darling of the musically and poetically inclined.