Perhaps their best work to date, The Black Heart Procession's fourth album, Amore del Tropico is an impressive collection of brooding and macabre songs of love and loss that defies traditional notions of independent rock. Pall Jenkins, Tobias Nathaniel and company have changed gears a bit since their last effort, Three (Touch & Go, 2000). Still present on their current release are Jenkins' anguished vocals, his frequent saw playing, and the noirish piano support that gives the band's sound a cabaret feel. [If you've never heard a saw played, the sound is very similar to a theremin, or as one website described: a saw played well "makes a brilliant, ethereal sound - very like the sound of a real human voice." The site elaborated: Saw players use a violin or cello bow (often home-made) to make their instrument vibrate. [...] They bend the instrument to swoop from one pitch to another, giving the instrument its characteristic portamento sound. Learn more here.] More than any other, these three characteristics define and distinguish the Black Heart Procession's music, especially from other bands on the Touch and Go label. Indeed, a number of Amore's songs stick to the technique of old: A Sign on the Road and Why I Stay are choice examples.

But the BHP in their latest effort have stressed new elements that have noticeably broadened their sound. First, the band has infused a loungy vibe into a few of the tracks — a welcomed divergence from the band's traditional sound. This new development is most apparent on the stellar opening tune, Tropics of Love (download here), a song that is so eerie that it could easily have appeared on the soundtrack to David Lynch's freakish murder mysteries, Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive. The song features strings (violin and cello), loungy latin beats, and enchanting backing female vocals. Another loungy number, Fingerprints, starts out to groovy dub beats and coalesces into a damn catchy violin-laden track with some of Jenkins' best lyrics: They found fingerprints / This is what you stole from your heart and mine / Stood in the way stood so long I knew it would be said / It was on that way that you made it all up inside of me / Now for once I see it's never gonna change.