* Takemitsu: I Hear The
Water Dreaming, etc. (BBC Symphony/Davis, et al.) (DG CD)
* Takemitsu: A Flock
Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden, etc. (TASHI, et al.) (DG CD)
* Takemitsu: In An
Autumn Garden, etc. (Tsuruta/Yokoyama et al.) (DG CD)
* Charlie Christian:
The Genius of Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy 4CD)
* Charles Mingus: The
Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964-65 (d.5-6) (Mosaic 7CD)
* Slobber Pup (Joe
Morris/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balázs Pándi): Black Aces (Rare Noise 2LP)
* Tom Rainey Trio:
Camino Cielo Echo (Intakt CD)
* Secret Keeper
(Stephan Crump & Mary Halvorson): Zeitgeist Gallery 2013-05-10 (CDR)
* Rodger Coleman &
Sam Byrd: Indeterminate (Improvisations for Piano and Drums) (NuVoid Jazz CD)
* Olu Dara: In The
World: From Natchez To New York (Atlantic HDCD)
* Olu Dara:
Neighborhoods (Atlantic HDCD)
* D’Angelo: Brown Sugar
(EMI CD)
* Frank Ocean: Channel
Orange (Island/Def Jam CD)
* Miguel: Kaleidoscope
Dream (RCA CD)
* Grateful Dead: Nassau
Coliseum, Uniondale, Long Island 1979-11-01 (selections) (SBD 3CDR)
* Grateful Dead: Road
Trips Vol.3 No.4: Penn State/Cornell ’80 (selections) (GDP/Rhino 3HDCD)
* Jerry Garcia Band:
Garcia Live Vol.2: Greek Theatre 8/5/90 (Round/ATO 2HDCD)
* Black Sabbath: Black
Sabbath (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†/‡)
* Black Sabbath:
Paranoid (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)
* Black Sabbath: Master
Of Reality (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Black Sabbath: Vol.4
(Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Black Sabbath:
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Yes: Going For The
One (Atlantic/Audio Fidelity SACD)
* Big Star: Nothing Can
Hurt Me (Original Soundtrack) (Ardent/Omnivore 2LP)
* Queens Of The Stone
Age: …Like Clockwork (Matador 2-45RPM LP)
* Opeth: Newbury
Comics, Leominster, MA 2013-04-20 (AUD CDR)
* ASG: Blood Drive
(Relapse 2-45RPM LP)†
* Beach House: Bloom
(Sub Pop CD)
* Deafheaven: Sunbather
(Deathwish, Inc. 2-45RPM LP)
†=iPod
‡=car
Commentary:
I’m currently reading Mingus Speaks, John F. Goodman’s new collection
of interviews with Charles Mingus (and others associated with him) recorded
back in the early 1970s as part of a never-realized collaboration (Mingus
passed away in 1979). In his preface, Goodman says:
I quit writing about music in the 1980s in part because I could never resolve the critic’s dilemma: you either limit yourself to readers versed in various kinds of technical talk and bore them with musicological maunderings, or you write your impressions. Neither approach alone is sufficient to render the sense of what’s going in music…Unlike most other arts, music dances away when you reach out to it (p.xii).
Goodman is, of course, fundamentally, frustratingly correct.
But he leaves out another option for the music writer: sociology. The eccentric
personalities, colorful scenes and myriad subcultures are easier to pin down in
words than that elusive, ephemeral thing, music. But this is similarly a dead
end. It might make for interesting stories but they rarely get to the essence
of “what’s going on in music.”
I’ve been
confronted with this conundrum ever since I began contemplating the new Deafheaven
album, Sunbather.
It would be
easy to smirkily comment how vocalist George Clarke and songwriter/guitarist
Kerry McCoy look more like fashion models than metalheads, or explicate the
provocatively sexy title1 and the incongruously cheery salmon/pink gradient
of the album cover2. Or, on a more substantive note, I could examine
the lyrics, which wrestle with wealth, poverty, family, love, loss, envy,
desperation, death and spiritual confusion—though Clarke’s shrieking, buried in
the mix, renders them unintelligible. I could describe the music as a mixture
of black metal, shoegaze and post-rock (whatever that is), a cross between Barzum, My Bloody Valentine and
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, blithely proclaim Sunbather an important,
“breakthrough” record and call it a day.
But that would
not get at “what’s going on” in this music.
I could
describe how it felt the first time I played this album a couple weeks ago,
being swept away by its ferocious intensity and dramatic dynamic swings, drawn
into the hour-long ebb and flow that somehow suspended time and how I was
overwhelmed by the powerful yet inexpressibly emotions the music evoked. But
then that would just be my impressions, personal and subjective—and useless as
criticism. Having listened to it repeatedly since, I could then bore you with
some “musicological maundering,” dissecting the dense layers of guitars, fetishizing
McCoy’s variegated tone and subtly sophisticated technique and his creative use
of electronic effects, meanwhile parsing the polymath drumming of Daniel Tracy.
I could focus on the epic lengths of the songs—nine, twelve, fifteen
minutes—and the atmospheric interludes that link them together (only one of
which doesn’t quite work)3. I could emphasize the moments of breathtaking beauty
amidst the harsh distortion and manic screaming: pretty chiming guitars, like a
whiff of fresh sea breeze in a bad neighborhood. I could assert this is a black
metal album that would appeal to many people well outside of the narrow subculture
that now shuns them for stepping outside its boundaries.
But this
still does not get at why this record seems to matter, why it packs such an
emotional wallop, why I think you all need to hear it—even if you think you
don’t like this sort of thing. Sunbather feels like a moment-defining record—a true
breakthrough for a young, hungry and ambitious band—leaving me at a loss for
words. Some will dismiss it as pretentious, “hipster metal,” others as
senseless noise. I call it art.
Notes:
1. “The
[title] song came to me as I was driving around…I moved in with my mom to go to
school for a bit and just chill out because life was really hectic. She lives
in such a beautiful town—she moved there a few years after I moved out—but I
got really depressed in this bourgeois, all-white seaside community. So one day
I skipped class, drove around and I just saw this girl in the nicest house, and
she was just laying there [sunbathing], and I was totally overcome with immense
depression. It looked so nice, and I was in that ‘what the fuck am I doing with
my life?’ mood at the time. I had a notepad with me, and the first half of the
song was jotted down right then” (Clarke interview with Pitchfork 2013-05-29).
2. “[T]he color that you see when you’re laying down in the
sun and your eyes are closed[.] The pinks and yellows behind your eyelids”
(Clarke interview with LA Weekly 2013-05-22).
3. That would be “Windows.”
