Deep Voices #24
What time has made
Deep Voices #24 on Apple Music
NB: Two tracks from this week’s playlist, Big Hard Excellent Fish’s “Imperfect List” and DB Shrier’s “East,” are not available on Apple Music.
Playlist notes:
This week’s opening song, 1990’s “Imperfect List” by Big Hard Excellent Fish is a spoken recitation of people and things the song’s writer, Pete Wylie, does not like. It begins with a biggie, “Adolf Hitler.” It continues to other high stakes topics like “John Lennon’s murder” and “anyone’s murder” but also sneaks in “greed” and “overdraft like a mountain.” It’s a novelty, but it’s effective once you learn the framework. Which I am not sure Morrissey, who has turned out to be a real bigot, ever did when he decided to walk out to the song during performances in 2004. I feel like he heard “Thatcher” and thought it was an updated version of “My Favorite Things.”
I regret not listening to Jonnine’s EP 2019 Super Natural EP until recently, as it is excellent. I love the opener, “You’re Wanting It to Go This Way.” Songs that feel like they are barely songs are my favorite type of songs. There’s a small beat, some wordless humming, and wooden hi-hat. An anxious line of synth melody snakes its way around two and a half minutes in. Jonnine’s vocal is the highlight, a 70/30 split of speaking/singing. Absolutely the type of sleeping bag of a song to cozy up into on a cold night in the woods. A couple tracks later, the repetitive vocal on Daisy Moon’s “Anemone” has a similar vibe, like a spell getting cast.
The first half of this week’s songs all have a damp texture, and DB Shrier’s saxophone on “East” has the feeling of being played from the bottom of a bog. The 1967 song is heavily Coltrane-indebted, and not the most original jazz song. Honestly, Shrier’s not the most astute or adventurous player, but the tone is really marvelously thick and dewy, and that feeling is the attraction as much of the composition. Think about how even mediocre cookies taste amazing fresh out of the oven. When conditions are ideal you don’t need to be an expert. “East” is mostly Shrier soloing, with the piano and drums off in the distance, poorly mic’d, giving them a feel of real yearning. The saxophone hits a few squelching notes, but mostly stays in a register acceptable for mixed company.
How the Irish bagpipe group Men Ha Tan Bagad and the Senegalese drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose teamed up for an album is a mystery to me. Senegalese and Irish music don’t necessarily feel like an obvious peanut butter and jelly matchup of song. But it works? I think? Enjoyable as a freaky anomaly at the very least.
M. Geddes Gengras and I were best friends in high school. I was way more uptight then, and Ged was a lot more free. It was exciting and sometimes scary to be his friend. When he didn’t hit the mark on an assignment I’d be worried for him, but it would come out as anger and disappointment instead of concern. I hate thinking back on that, acting more like a parent than a friend. But I love having that history, especially now that I’ve mellowed at least a little bit. That parent instinct part of me now feels pride. “Lapidus” is a song from his excellent new album, Time Makes Nothing Happen, a sentiment I happen to strongly disagree with. In his case, what time has made is an intuitive and exploratory musician with a singular voice in the world of experimental music. He makes his music with analog synthesizers, an analog sound that can be anything but linear. Ged’s learned to tame the instruments’ wilier intuitions and make something more wizardly than mystical, something inviting and upbeat. Same as him.