Final Impressions: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem

If you’ve never experienced a Phil Elverum project before (Mount Eerie, the Microphones, other K Records stuff of the early ’00s), I cannot recommend listening to Wind’s Poem.

As a previous Microphones fanatic, though, I can only speak of the album through my expectations.

Mr. Elverum has not strayed from his major-key, 5 note melodies, nor has his lyrical powers moved beyond the awkwardness of his earlier, more emo-tinged work. “My heart a frozen boulder” always stuck out in every listen. His words are more removed form his emotions this time, making the content he covers more distanced, more cerebral. It seems like he’s attempting to construct a metaphysical landscape out of his relationship with nature. But as my wife exclaimed on one car ride: “Those words just don’t fit!! [laughing]” It’s true, the rhythm of the words are sometimes incredibly clunky. I am sometimes inspired by philosophical texts, but their jargon is not the stuff of songs.

Wind’s Poem is made up, on the larger scale, of two different style of sound: loud, abrasive and simple; and gentle, meandering, and simple.

1. Loud songs. Walls of loud guitars and a wash of cymbals. Mr. Elverum’s voice comes in occasionally, but the mix has no room for him. This competition of sound makes for an unsatisfying listen. I tended to skip these song for that reason. The songs perpetuate themselves with a droning note or chord, perhaps to build tension before moving to the next note or chord. This gives that incredible sense of walking through waist-high sludge when executed successfully, but the muddy mix (no pun intended) causes it to simply feel like an extended wait until the next note or chord! Oh no!

2. Soft songs. These have always been Mr. Elverum’s strong point and Wind’s Poem is no exception. Each song has an interesting sonic space and arrangement. His vocals don’t compete as much in the mix, though being able to distinguish the words are not always desirable, as I stated.

I struggled, though, as I said in my previous post, with the energy of the record. These soft songs feel motionless. They feel largely uninspired. Like they were written in a period of numbness. Whereas Mr. Elverum’s work as the Microphones was powered by his strong emotional feelings, these songs feel like they lack that compositional will to be. He has some nice melodies, some interesting arrangements – the record is fairly well-crafted. It’s lacking energy, though. But that’s purely my intuition. Nothing objective.

If you are interested, here are the tracks that I particularly enjoyed. “Between Two Mysteries” is particularly great! That track comes highly recommended.

8. Between Two Mysteries  ****
9. Ancient Questions
11. Lost Wisdom pt. 2
12. Stone’s Ode

Note on the reviews of the record: too much attention paid to Wind’s Poem’s debt to metal. Other than loud, abrasive guitars, moving in unison, I just didn’t think it was such an important factor in experiencing the album. No double-bass drum, no screeching/guttural vocals. Then again, my understanding of metal is limited. To me, this record sounded just like his other records. No additional references necessary.

Yellow Pink Dots (WIP)

Sadly, there will be no demo attached quite yet. I’m very much in the planning stages. I have two separate harmonic movements that will link up, as well as an idea of where I’m putting the section Evan sent to me.

D-G-B(flat)
C-E(flat)-G

Very simple, yes, and rather typical in terms of my chordal thinking. But a lot of room for melody and accompaniment. Presently, I have it scaled back to two percussion tracks, a single electric guitar and bass.

The guitar and bass will probably play the root notes with occasional harmonic tinkering. Meanwhile, the meter of the piece will be bounce between 4/4 and 5/4, I haven’t charted it out quite yet. Should be interesting. I’d rather write to the words than my usual practice of writing words to pre-recorded music.

The drums are brisk and insistent, and already I imagine them floating in and out of the rhythmic emphasis.

Should have demo up by end of the weekend, as well as some charts?

Fun.

Climate of Hunter

Cult acts are hilarious in that they are lauded for exuding mystery. I tend enjoy cult acts because they have a great story. Scott Walker has both of these. What he doesn’t have is a lot of fans of his sole recording of the 1980’s, Climate of Hunter.

The textures are bizarre and rather troubling at first. The fretless bass is employed as a true dated-1980’s weapon, although I wonder if it’s actually a Chapman stick. The drums range from tinny electronic snaps to richly EQ’ed full drum kits.

The strings are of course the name of the game here, as they usually are on Walker’s outings. Songs like “Rawhide” and “Sleepwalker’s Woman” are incredibly haunting as the arrangements calls for blocks of chords who quiver in microtonal bliss.

Otherwise, keyboards are used to create and capture sonic irregularities. Most songs contain one or multiple drones that, like the strings, drift in and out of pitch, creating a hazy but menacing backdrop to Scott’s words. Horns are employed in a similar manner, rarely suloing in the traditional sense, such as Evan Parker’s incredible wall of saxophone bleats on “Song 6.”

This is an incredibly diverse album, one that shares haunting atmospherics with chart-teasing promise (the Billy Ocean-duet “Song 3″), and ends with a mournful blues number, Walker’s somber tale of a drifter set to Mark Knopfler’s solo acoustic guitar.

I dug this set, as it connected with his old solo work while pointing firmly in the direction of his future endeavors. Grab this if you can find it and are also obsessed with Senor Walker.

Evan Demos – 09.13.09

Songs songs songs!

Here are two more demos. First up: an update to Terrifying Heights. Lemmie know your thoughts. A bunch of the instruments need to be rerecorded, but I think its well on it’s way to becoming something concise. Mix is a bit messy, but hopefully you get the general sense. Also new vocal line has no lyrics yet. The words were improvised and some badly need replacing. If anything strikes you send me your thoughts!

Terrifying Heights

Now for a new one! Silly little keyboard theme, a bit on the cliché side, but I found it to be suitable for a vocal playground. The harmonies are very rough (both are first takes), but I think I captured some good ideas in there. Let me know if you’d like me to upload the audio files if you feel inspired to work on the track.

Blue Neon

Also, check out that ROOM SOUND on the vocals. Family was gone for a day, so I recorded in our open two-story foyer. Gorgeous!

Evan

Pop Group: Y

I hate feeling the like the joke is on me.  I’m sure I share that feeling with a lot of folks.  So when I bought Pop Group’s first record, I expected some things (of course):

1. A lot of funk/punk
2. Screaming vocals about politics/whatever
3. Noise over rhythm

What I got was a completely bizarre mash-up of James Chance, The Fall and Pere Ubu…on the first two tracks. The rest of the album…well…can’t you tell by my over-use of ellipsis that I am a little non-plussed?

This is a record that tries too hard to be fragmented, if that makes any sense. I have trumpeted bands that destroy the code of order inherent in rock and roll, but even I have a breaking point. Listen to three tracks on this album: The first two, “She is Beyond Good and Evil” and “Thief of Fire”, as well as the fifth track “We Are Time.” They boast awesome rhythm sections and tangled guitars, as Mark Stewart’s vocals dance in and out of the mix.

On the boards is reputed dub producer Dennis Bovell (he produced the Slit’s debut as well), who does his best to make sense of the detritus that litters the rest of the album. Boring, “experimental” music fills the holes on this record. I really can’t stand when a band doesn’t have any ideas and decides aimless improv is good enough.

Of course, resident hack review of Allmusic.com John Dougan gives the record a bizarre 4 1/2 stars out of 5 for apparently no reason. In the age of iPod and short attention spans, this record has fallen to the wayside. Blah.

Songs For Drella

Things I learned about this Lou Reed / John Cale collab from the early 90’s.

-Cale and Reed still hate each other
-The record is a song cycle about Andy Warhol
-All the songs are super simple
-Almost all the songs are duets, either electric piano and guitar, or electric viola and guitar
-Reed sings most of the songs
-Of the songs Cale sings, two out of the four are from Warhol’s perspective
-the lyrics are powerful, almost pitch-perfect, especially Reed’s delivery on “Work”, one of my favorites
-the recording is dry and essentially without reverb, and Cale’s keyboard is startlingly precise. He doesn’t miss a beat, which is hard to do when you are essentially pounding repeated patterns against Reed’s often unhinged electric thrash.

I like it.  Dig.

Goon and Goonier

Raincoats: Moving

Back from Europe, and after a trip to Rough Trade East, I’ve accrued three new recordings, namely the aforementioned Raincoats album, Scott Walker’s Climate of Hunter, and The Pop Group’s Y. One at a time though, and all after the first listen.

NOTE TO READER: Do not under any circumstances read Allmusicguide.com’s horrific review of this record. The reviewer describes none of the music, gives it an arbitrary rating, and completely makes up the track listing (he even leaves off two tracks after claiming there is bonus material!) Awful. Go to wikipedia to get info on the band and records.

Moving is the third and final studio album of the Raincoats first period, and in a lot of ways it is their most cohesive. The addition of former 101′ers and PIL drummer Richard Dudanski, Derek Goddard on productions and other friends on horns and synthesizer, you can imagine this record has a fuller sound then the previous.

Unlike Odyshape, most of the rhythms on Moving are tight and jagged. They can never settle into a neat 4/4 or 3/4 box, a trend I love in a band. The arrangements snake around the beat, with Gina Birch’s bass usually leading the way melodically.

The singing is actually very solid, not as much screaming on this record. Block harmonies and double-vocals on the chorus work incredibly well to intensify the lyrics meaning.

I really have to listen to this album again, but not in a Scott Walker-Tilt manner. Moreso, this is an album of obvious hooks and harmonic passages, but there is complexity buried in the sweetness. It’s a happy, dancey funky affair that will never tire you and ends too early. Get it if you haven’t already. According to Rough Trade East, they were the only store to carry it in stock…IN THE WORLD. I call bully, but I bought it anyway. A sucker for good music to the bitter end.

30th Century Man

Wow. My whole life gets completely turned around sometimes, and music normally the culprit. Over the past five years, this feeling is attained only under the best of circumstances, and it certainly isn’t as frequent as it was when I first realized there was music beyond the realm of top 40 and Grateful Dead.

Last night I watched Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, a documentary of the life and career of Scott Engel, the American transplanted in the United Kingdom who assumed the Walker surname upon joining the Walker Brothers, a group whose popularity rivaled that of the Beatles and Stones during their heyday in the mid-60’s (gosh do I love rambling run-on sentences.

Anyways, it’s a great documentary. A lot of luminary figures appear, among them David Bowie (he also played the role of executive producer), Eno, Marc Almond, Julian Cope (in letter form), Evan Parker and the many producers and arrangers from Scott’s past.

The interviews are wonderful, and they thankfully don’t pound you with too much background. You get a sense of their fame, Walker’s burgeoning song writing skills, his amazing run of solo records (Scott 1-4, all must-haves if you ask me), and his inevitable downfall. Overnight, he went from the prince of melancholy orchestral pop to a cabaret covers singer.

The point in the film that truly grabs me is the section pertaining to the Walker’s reunion album Nite Flights. I don’t download music (not out of principle, I merely hate the idea of downloading spyware), so these were all new songs to me. I had heard Scott 4, and portions of his solo records, as well as 1995’s startling Tilt.

The title track ‘Nite Flights’ pours out of the speakers, a pulsing hi-hat reminding me that this was the late-70’s era of disco. But the bass line is falling down a flight of stairs repeatedly, and the song is basking in a drone of shimmering electronics and strings. Scott’s vocals are as per usual meter-less, wandering amongst the sound scape with lyrics of terrible nightmares and humans that take on cretinous forms. Awesome. Just awesome. Brian Eno appears later in the same scene and listens to the “Nite Flights” tracks and is similarly taken aback. “It’s humiliating, really,” he says. “No, really. We haven’t gotten any further.” Woof. Coming from Eno it is a searing indictment of today’s musicians. And he’s right.

Watch this film. It broke me in half, and made me want to collect his entire catalog of music.

I’m off to Europe, so expect even more doldrums here. Rats. Updates soon though. Bye!

Impressions: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem

Listened all the way through Mount Eerie’s “Wind’s Poem” on the train ride home tonight. Sounded like classic Phil Elverum, minus the charm. Minus the attention to detail. It felt big, weighty, and murky. The immensity of the sound he tried to create in the louder moments was so blurry that the sense of scale was lost. The album also felt like it was lacking the “will-to-be” of his earlier work. His melodies and musical ideas were often carried by his voice’s gentle weariness. It seemed like he was meandering this time around. I know the feeling. The music felt like it was written in an isolated space, with a limited feeling of the expanse of the world. That strikes me as odd, especially since his works have always had a thought to the “elements.”

Ahhhh. But then again: the music triggered an emotion in me, one that I equate with a smaller sense of the world, of a certain boring depression. Of course I would have trouble with the record! More later. I’ll listen more tomorrow!

New Listens: Ry Cooder/Antony & the Johnstons

Busy busy busy. I got married, Evan’s getting married. Woof town. Anyways, here are some things I noticed about these records that may be informing are music soon:

Ry Cooder – Self titled

This is Ryland’s first record, made under the supervision of Lenny Waronker/Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Cooder had played with Taj Mahal in Rising Sons, and helped arrange and played on Captain Beefheart’s magnificent debut “Safe as Milk”.

Cooder is known as a guitar virtuoso, but what amazed me about this record is his remarkable restraint. He’s obviously gifted, but there isn’t a wasted guitar solo to be found. The instrumental pieces, such as Cooder’s lone compositional contribution “Available Space”, offers slippery slide guitar dueling with Van Dykes’s piano for less than two minutes time. “France Chance” is a rampaging rhythm guitar stomp that the Velvet Underground wished they’d copped, and “One Meatball” pits Cooder’s tentative baritone against a wall of orchestration that somehow manages not to completely swallow the dark humor of the song.

Continuing the theme of economy, Antony and the Johnston’s debut record is mostly piano and vocals. Whether it’s Rufus Wainwright, Boy George, Lou Reed or Antony’s warbling operatics, the voice and words are the centerpiece of this record. The drums and bass that accompany the record are expertly recorded, adding a gritty punch and bottom that such a muted experience demands.

The balance is perfect, as the occasional murmurs of synthesizer and orchestral swells accompanying the sparse arrangements are give room to color the rather somber environment the songs inhabit.

Neither of these records are particularly long, probably averaging at 40 minutes. Each artists knows their strength and play to it, but don’t give in to ambition’s sometime suffocating grasp.