|
 Raising
the Bar
knotworking
A
Garden Below (One Mad Son)
The colorful cover of the new CD by alt-country-folksters
knotworking drives the point home: Ed Gorch and company have
burst into Technicolor. Knotworking’s first two albums were
pensive little curiosities adorned with grainy, gray photos
and packed with Gorch’s stirringly poetic sentiments and lo-fi
production. The group’s charm lay in rough-hewn, brooding
(yet pretty) minimalism; this time around, however, the group
have shed their hairshirts and left the sober environs of
the bedroom behind.
 A
Garden Below—which is bolstered by warm, full production
(courtesy of Saugerties’ Nevessa studios) and the lengthening
shadow of Gorch’s songwriting talent—is a leap forward for
an already strong unit. The album features outright rockers
(“Blossom”), rousing alt-country beauties (“A Time Ago”),
and the kind of acoustic rumination Ed rode into town on a
few years back (“When We Were Small”). The folk-rocker “Decided
to Walk” is already one of my favorite songs of the year.
It’s been fun watching knotworking develop by bounds, and
A Garden Below clearly marks them as one of the artistic
success stories in our area.
Beyond the professional production and fuller arrangements,
a good indicator of the sea change is guitarist Mike Hotter:
Behind his benign, hobbitish presence lurks a rock god. Hotter’s
spare, intelligent playing was a highlight of the group’s
previous effort, Notes Left Out, whose title seemed
a tribute to his perfect economy. That said, it’s great to
hear him knock off a searing, several-bar solo in the middle
of “Blossom” and launch a euphoric coda on “Listening.” Meanwhile,
on “Long Step,” Hotter bursts forth with the brand of fuzzed-up
twang that would do Bakersfield proud.
A wealth of local talent—including John Brodeur, Dan Winchester
and Kamikaze Hearts Matthew Loiacano and Bob Buckley—help
knotworking out, along with longtime allies Karen Codd (cello)
and Megan Prokorym (violin). Gorch, Hotter and co. deserve
a big pat on the back; A Garden Below is a great album.
Look for an official release in July.
—Erik
Hage
Gary
Lucas
The
Edge of Heaven: Gary Lucas Plays Mid-century Chinese Pop (Indigo)
The rococo, the extraterres-trial, twang and Yangtze Delta
blues cohabit on this beautiful album of art pop. A tribute
to Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong, songstresses who worked in Chinese
film in the 1940s and 1950s, The Edge of Heaven alternates
vocal and instrumental tracks—some tunes surface in both guises—that
are exotic, winning and surprisingly accessible. Vocal cuts
like the leisurely, courtly “Please Allow Me to Look at You
Again” and the austere, dreamy “The Wall” alternate with “Old
Dreams” and “If I’m Without You,” instrumentals that showcase
Lucas’ openness in both tunings and heart. Chow and Bai are
long gone; in their stead are vocalists Celest Chong, a Singaporean,
and a German woman, Gisburg. Both are students of Mandarin,
the language of the originals. Both, too, like Lucas, are
originals: Chong’s is the more birdlike, sing-songy voice,
while Gisburg’s is, perhaps, bluesier. In the liner notes
to this beautifully packaged French import, Lucas, a New York
guitarist to the left of Marc Ribot, says he came across this
“mid-century Chinese pop” in the mid-1970s, when he was in
Taipei working out a love affair. Best-known for his work
in Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and in his own Gods and
Monsters, Lucas is an intrepid musical explorer who has always
wanted to capture the magic of this music and transfigure
it—with respect. “Edge,” all eloquent and strange, reflects
and addresses the necessary stillness at the heart of creativity.
—Carlo
Wolff
Lisa
Moore
Which
Side Are You On? (Cantaloupe Music)
On Which Side Are You On?, pianist Lisa Moore performs
the work of Frederic Rzewski. The pianist makes such a tour
de force of Rzewski’s “De Profundis” that the rest
of this disc—the composer’s “Four North American Ballads”—comes
almost as a surprise. Rzewski’s own performance of “De Profundis”
sits by itself on a short CD, and I’d suggest you program
your CD player to stop after listening to what Moore does
with the work. It’s powerful enough that you’ll appreciate
having time to let the experience sink in.
Drawing from Oscar Wilde’s moving prison diary, Rzewski weaves
together narration and an emotionally charged piano commentary
in this 1992 work; the pianist is also called upon to provide
an array of grunts and other noises as yet another percussive,
haunting commentary.
“People
point to Reading Jail,” wrote Wilde, “and say, ‘This is where
the artistic life leads a man.’ Well, it might lead to worse
places.” The artist always lives a little outside society;
that the flamboyant Wilde was jailed added an extra note of
persecution. As a composer, Rzewski combines a sense of theater
with a keen political awareness: Music is a tool that can
lend urgency to a cause, and it has a powerful ability to
unite. Not surprisingly, Rzewski’s best-known work is a set
of variations on the Chilean folk song “The People United
Will Never Be Defeated!”
The “North American Ballads” are similar on a smaller scale.
Composed in 1978-’79, they draw upon four songs well-known
to any student of labor history: “Dreadful Memories,” “Which
Side Are You On?,” “Down by the Riverside” and “Winnsboro
Cotton Mill Blues,” each featuring a setting of the song itself
that then spins into an appropriate fantasy (or reversed,
in the case of “Which Side,” in which the ending with a dramatic
theme statement).
Rzewski’s music relies heavily on interpretive skill. He spent
many years as part of an improvisational ensemble, and his
works demand personality from the performer. Moore is more
than up to the task, and her versions contrast nicely with
recent recordings by the composer. Where he takes a percussive,
bombastic approach, especially in a persuasive account of
“De Profundis,” Moore looks at the drama of the work and paces
it accordingly, drawing us through its episodes into a compelling
finale.
The more abstract “Ballads” showcase technical as well as
interpretive skills, and Moore is a determined, lyrical master
of this kind of music, her awareness of the sometimes hard-to-discern
structures of these works one of the important components
of their success.
These are unsettling but important pieces of music, and they’ve
found a worthy champion.
—B.A.
Nilsson
The
Essex Green
The Long Goodbye
(Merge)
The Essex Green are a Brooklyn-based trio, bolstered variously
with about a dozen other like-minded players. They share sensibilities
(and at times, labels) with such ensembles as Of Montreal,
the Beachwood Sparks and Apples in Stereo, all of whom draw
from the invitingly deep and mysterious well that holds the
glory days of psychedelic pop. Like their pals, they do this
without becoming mired in the era—The Long Goodbye
sounds like the contemporary release that it is. This is the
land where Jimmy Webb goes hiking with Rod Argent, only to
run into Roy Wood, who startles them by jumping out from behind
a tree, but then makes it all OK by treating them to ice-cream
sodas. Granted, there’s a lot of names floating by in those
preceding sentences, but the bottom line is that Sasha Bell
sings most of these subtly hook-laden songs with an offhand
ease and casual beauty that floats over arrangements that
would quicken Brian Wilson’s pulse.
—David
Greenberger
|
Columns
& Opinions
