Burning Light

June 28 2009

What's New and Happening in the Uneasy-Listening Department

So, one from a relative newcomer (and pretty much the only interesting woman performer out there right now who's not Patti Smith) and one from a guy who's been at it for almost 40 years...

St. Vincent -- Actor. When we last visited Annie Clark and her debut album Marry Me, I'd mentioned that I enjoyed it as much for the potential as for the actual songs. And so, when this one came out and the accolades followed, I was stoked. But I have to disagree. The potential's still intact, and this is clearly a step forward, but she's not there yet.

But to repeat, this is a step forward. So let's talk about what's working and what isn't.

On the "what you need to know to care one way or the other" side: Another reviewer put it nicely (if a bit overstatedly): "Annie Clark has found her voice, and it's not one that you want reading bedtime stories to the kids." Her largely self-played music has this very dark-side-of-Disney feel to it. If anyone remembers that truly spiffy compilation Stay Awake (featuring, among other things, The Replacements doing their best strip-club version of "Cruella De Ville" and, even more apropos to this review, Tom Waits' truly creepy but annoyingly catchy version of "Heigh Ho").... Well, Annie'd've fit in just fine. More specifically, she'd've locked Natalie Merchant out of the studio and made that duet of "Little April Shower" with Michael Stipe equally pretty but SO much more unsettling. So now you know.

On the plus side: The music's got more oomph in general, and's even a bit more scratchy/funky in places. Also, the Billie Holiday imitations that overran the last third of Marry Me have all but disappeared.

On the down side: For the most part, her voice hasn't raised the oomph factor to accompany the music. And the last third of the album is STILL too mellow, except for moments where you assume Annie's thinking, "Hmmm, this is too mellow. Let me add some random noise HERE." I.e., even when she's breaking it up, it sounds a bit forced.

So, in short: The sonic palette has expanded noticeably, but the singing and songwriting (more in the melodic sense -- she's already fine in the lyrics department) haven't made the same jump yet. Hopefully next time.

But for now, highlights: Largely the first two-thirds. "The Strangers," a sweetly smarting dismissal of an unfaithful lover, starts exactly like I promised it would -- that is, creepy-Disney -- with some great sonic blasts in the bridge. And the lyrics support it well:

Lover, I don't play to win

For the thrill, until I'm spent

Paint the black hole blacker

Paint the black hole blacker...

Desperate don't look good on you

Neither does your virtue

Paint the black hole blacker....

"Save Me From What I Want" (great title) is a more trip-hoppy tune kicked off with a neat keyboard-British-police-siren effect. "The Neighbors," which one of the lesser songs early on, features Annie's strongest vocals and some truly distorted noise-laden carousel music. The comparatively straightforward, driving single "Actor Out of Work" kind of picks up where "The Strangers" left off: "You're an actor out of work / You're a liar, and that's the truth.... You're a bandage, pull it out / I think I love you, I think I'm mad..."

I'm thinking the next single, if not for its title, has to be "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood," another opportunity to laugh off a breakoff that isn't always working:

Laughing with a mouth of blood

From a little spill I took...

And I can't see the future

But I know it's got big plans for me

All of my old friends aren't so friendly

And all of my old haunts are now haunting me

The highlight has to be "Marrow," though. Starting off with a 20-second riff that Steve Reich would have made a whole album out of (and trust me, he has), things just get creepier. An offbeat enters, some quiet scratching, and the local Gregorian monks apparently show up to intone in the background, before kicking into a funked-up chorus consisting of "H. E. L. P. Help. Me. Help. Me." Thereafter, some majorly distorted guitars enter the bridge, before Annie gets into H-E-L-P-ing with the monks, and they all do The Robot together until the song ends. Yeah, it kind of sticks with you.

After this, I guess Annie thought she earned a break, because the rest of the album's more or less a long exhale. Although "The Bed" picks up the creepy Disney vibe again, as it really kind of does tell a bedtime story that sure ain't gonna help the kids sleep:

We're sleeping underneath the bed

To scare the monsters out

With our dear daddy's Smith and Wesson

We've gotta teach them all a lesson

Don't move

Don't scream

Or we will have to shoot

Stop, right where you stand

We need a chalk outline if you can

Put your hands where we can see them, please...

So there you are. Get it now and say you were there when.

Peter Hammill -- Thin Air. Leave it to Peter Hammill to have a career reinvigorated by a heart attack (in 2003). Since then, there's been his widely acclaimed solo album Singularity, a truly good Van der Graaf Generator album in Present , and now this. Let me come right to it: This is the best Peter's sounded, consistently speaking, since at least Sitting Targets. And it's clearly gonna be a big-time grower. Just like a certain album last year. (Scroll to the bottom if your memory fails you. Hint: Someone else who's been around for nearly 40 years, although they're decidedly perkier.)

Not to say it's pleasant. C'mon, it's Peter Hammill. But he does lovely-but-disturbing in a way that our above friend Annie/St. Vincent can only still dream about for now, and when a depressing tortured-artist kinda guy to begin with confronts his own mortality.... well, there's kinda nowhere to go but up. Or way, way, way down. To continue to riff on Simple Spirituality (which, yes, I'm reading again), Peter's always been painfully transparent -- emphasis equal on both words. But here he actually sounds vulnerable as well. And if he's letting me in, I'm going there. And finding a whole set of new gems in the process.

Probably the finest moments here (and the title as well) stem from reminiscences of a visit he and fellow VdGG member Guy Evans paid to the World Trade Center in 1976, when the possibilities seemed endless for both them and the building they stood atop. So he's already got one hell of a metaphor to work with there.

And it's interesting how the guy who sang "still, I am at least holding all the doors open" 35 years revisits the idea here, in light of all that -- usually more as an "OK, God, let's see what you've got" than the "PROVE it, Big Boy" attitude the above was once delivered with. Which is probably no more evident than on the moody, distorted waltz that opens Thin Air, "The Mercy": "It is finished, it is finished / God mercy's moving us along... / If I say good night / And God bless, I might / And confess, I'm hoping to see / That when the daylight ends / I will see the fait accompli... I must go outside, and I might be, some time."

The atmospheric and somber "Your Face on the Street" and "Stumbled" both hearken back to the DIY sound that was all over The Future Now (I've also heard even earlier references to Chameleon in the Dead of Night, and yeah, that works, too). And "Wrong Way Round" could be a King Crimson instrumental. Crunchy and compelling.

And with that comes the center of the album, in every sense. "Ghosts of Planes" is the first of the WTC songs. I guess the best way to describe it is that it's an ambient tone poem.

Or: Boy, it's eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery.

The air is thin, the air is thin
The Top of the World Club is what we're in
How thin the air, How thin the air
The Top of the World Club isn't there....

An aerial flotilla, the ghosts of planes pass by...
gravity distended out of shape...
from the consequences
History of the no escape
Arrival and departure, all points between now coincide
Here's a ticket to oblivion
Onward passage is denied...

So, of course, we move to a couple of lost-love songs. "If We Must Part Like This," opens with some neat slide guitar behind a rhythm that sounds like Bo Diddley on a lot of 'ludes. "I feel homesick, even though I'm here at home.... Even when I'm here beside you, I still miss you so." The stately piano-centered self-elegy "Undone," likewise, mourns what's gone even as the shadows remain:

I mark the high days and the holidays

Red-letter on the page

March forward into memory

Prepare to leave

The envelope I push against

So rapidly becomes

A wrap to keep me safe and warm

But soon enough I'll be undone

And if, for instance, I had spent

a lifetime in the service

of cleanliness and godliness

I'd still be washed-up now....

Everything I've learned

Is tiny is the scheme of things

The reckoning's begun

I hold together what I can

The stitch is about the become undone...

I'm waiting on a final clue

A final validation

Of what I did, of what I hid

Of all I call my own.

The high days and the holidays

Are numbered, every one

So quick the hours rush away

And everything we've said... undone.

From there, "Diminished" is the sound of the center falling apart. It's practically a non-song by the middle, as Peter says simply but appropriately, "I'm so scared..." leaving us awash in more eery ambience for the most four minutes.

We return to elegy for the final song (and the reprise of the WTC theme), "The Top of the World Club." Think U2's "October" stretched out, deconstructed, and doomed over the course of seven minutes. Here Peter looks back one more time and wonders about what might have been and what it all what worth: "It felt like everything we wanted was in reach / So we so easily awaited / And the perfume of the age / Oh, I could taste it... My crawling skin, my crawling skin / What circle of hell have we falling in?... All the stars extinguishing one by one..."

And yep, this would have to be my favorite of 2009 so far. Go figure.

Posted by: burninglight at 03:14 | link | comments (4)

Comments:

#1 30 June 2009 - 20:55

I dunno, but I think you have to classify
P.J. Harvey, Regina Spektor, and Jane
Siberry as "interesting" at the very least-

woop!

Rick

Anonymous

#2 30 June 2009 - 21:04

Yo Rick: P.J. Harvey hasn't it done for me, dunno Regina Spektor, and you haven't shipped me Jane Siberry yet. :) But I do like my St. Vincent. And hopefully will even more in the fututre.

burninglight

#3 02 July 2009 - 15:49

Yo,

Jane Siberry-I'll make you a comp. eventually, but
as an introduction see if you can find the tracks
"Calling All Angels" and "The Valley". If you like these
I'll send you more. And I suspect you might.

Rick

Anonymous

#4 02 July 2009 - 18:35

I found an anthology called Love Is Everything. At least the 2nd half of it. Let's see how that rolls.

burninglight

Comments:

About me

Recent comments

Links

Archives

Counter

Posted by: burninglight at 03:14 | link | comments (4)