I have been listening a great deal recently to Natalie Merchant's superb new album, which, in turn, has sent me back to her back catalogue which I haven't explored in quite a while. Perhaps the song of hers I love more than any other is the exquisite Verdi Cries. It was written when she was 19 following a band rehearsal in a disused theatre in freezing conditions. After everybody had left, she sat down by herself at an out-of-tune grand piano and crafted this gorgeously evocative song in a single 12-hour burst of creativity, and presented it to her band members as a fully-finished number the following morning. It is a beautiful meditation on the nature of memory and how it is formed from apparently innocuous experiences that, in the fulness of time, gain a sense of profundity.
"The man in 119 takes his tea all alone.
Mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries.
I'm hearing opera through the door.
The souls of men and women, impassioned all.
Their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call.
I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.
"He will not touch their pastry
But every day they bring him more.
Gold from the breakfast tray, i steal them all away
And then go and eat them on the shore.
"I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand,
Sing of a lover's fate sealed by jealous hate
Then wash my hand in the sea.
With just three days more I'd have just
about learned the entire score to Aida."
As she walks the shore, she sings remembered snippets from Aida and paints a picture on the sand. She does not reflect on "a lover's fate sealed by jealous fate" and the relevance that this music may have for the man back at the hotel. With the innocence of a child, she devours the stolen pastries, sings her songs and, crucially, washes her hand in the sea, as if casting aside this moment to the oblivion of memory.
The song ends elegantly and succinctly with the lines, "Holidays must end, as you know. All is memory taken from me: The stolen tea, the sand drawing, the verging sea, all years ago." So much is compressed with acute emotion in those lines. Merchant does not linger and does not reflect. All she gives us is a series of subjective respones to a recalled event. And yet these lines are so open to interpretation.
The man in the adjoining hotel room has evidently suffered an unspecified loss and finds comfort in his music. Silence would give him too much time and space to reflect on his loss. Perhaps the reason that this music holds such intoxicating power over him is that he once shared it during the most intimate moments with the one he has lost. The pastries that are brought to his door on a daily basis are evidently delivered as an act of sympathy by a neighbour who understands his loss. The fact that the pastries are left untouched signifies an inability and unwillingness on his part to engage in social contact. The transformative power of music is expressed in the way the man clings to Aida as a way to cling to the memory of his loved one and, for Merchant, I believe it is the re-hearing of Aida many years later that reignites this seemingly lost memory. It is not an overtly emotional song, but the power of the song is derived from its gently understated and bittersweet tone which informs the standpoint of a mature woman looking back on a childhood experience, understanding more fully the very nature of the rupturing loss which the man in room 119 has suffered. Perhaps she herself has also suffered a recent loss and finds herself inexplicably reaching for her copy of Aida, which summon up these long dormant memories. An achingly beautiful song which grows in stature with the passage of time.
Listening to this song, I recall James Merrill's great poem, Lost in Translation, which tackles the same subject matter of past experiences that form part of our subconscious, and how the transformative power of deep reflection enables us to recover meaning from the life which we live, as eloquently expressed by the following closing lines of the poem :
"But nothing's lost. Or else: all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it...
And in that loss a self-effacing tree,
Color of context, imperceptibly
Rustling with the angel, turns the waste
To shade and fiber, milk and memory."
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
That's fantastic, Tony. The audio-visual quality of bootleg footage is really amazing nowadays. Growing up I used to spend quite a bit of money on bootlegs and, despite the sometimes awful quality of the footage, I always thought that it presented a more honest impression of the live event than a professionally recorded concert film, many of which are just too polished and over-edited. Here are two wonderful examples of St. Vincent in action. First of all is her show at the Paradiso in Amsterdam earlier this year which was edited together from three separate camera angles (a very seamless job for an amateur setup) and the second clip shows Ms. Clark crowd surfing during a performance of Krokadil at Bonaroo in 2012. The sheer frenetic energy of the footage here could never be replicated with a professional setup. I don't think she tried this tomfoolery at her shows with David Byrne.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
I think it is just you and me on St Vincent but I think Ken likes her legs!
Very well behaved on the DB tour but I have seen some of this surfing stuff alright. A bit dodgy to say the least.
At one of her recent concerts (will post it when I locate it) in the US she climbs up scaffolding in the auld high heels.
Me thinks she might be going a bit off the rails.She needs to do another album with DB to calm her down.
Agree on all your comments on bootlegs (prices in the eighties,enjoyment of performance compared to official recordings) and
the current situation where so much live stuff is available of such good quality compared to the eighties.
Some of the stuff done by impersonators is great to watch. This one is linked not because it is the best but the guy is just rocking it out
from the heart or maybe he is just mad.Though he does look as if he should be careful in that regard!
I think you're referring to the recent Austin City Limits show, Tony. A good show but the set closer, Your Lips Are Red, is a strong enough song to stand by itself without this theatricality. There is also another show (Pitchfork, I think) where she ends this song by banging her head against the drummer's bass drum. Perhaps she thinks the average music festival audience doesn't want to see an extended guitar solo and she feels the need to provide additional entertainment. There was a real tautness to her indoor shows earlier this year up to and including the Primavera gig in Barcelona. Since then the tone has become progressively lighter and looser. She has been on the road since February and will be touring until December so she is evidently working hard on maintaining her visibility in the public eye. I just hope she isn't going to burn out. There was an interview she gave to Rolling Stone around the time of Primavera and she had just spent 30 hours on a plane flying back from Australia where she was playing some shows and the journalist mentioned she looked absolutely shattered.
What I really admire about her, aside from the music of course, is her work ethic. There was an excellent interview in The Wire recently where she spoke about the time she dropped out of Berklee because she really questioned the value of what she was doing. She believed that the point of this formal music education was merely to make musicians employable and had little, if anything, to do with Art, so, in her naivety, she quit. She then went through a really hard time when she wasn't getting any work at all and she had to sell off her guitar simply to pay her rent. The lowest point came when she unburdened herself to her sister who tried to console her by telling her she could always come home and get a job at Starbucks. Fate intervened in the form of a chance audition with The Polyphonic Spree and she never looked back. I do think that this very close brush with failure scarred her and spurred her on to a heavy and punishing work schedule. In the Rolling Stone interview I referred to earlier, she mentioned one concert where there was a technical problem with her guitar pedals and she freaked out because she believed her career was over. (As if she is one bad concert away from being a nobody..) She talks of spending 18 hour days working on her music when she's not touring and she jumped at the opportunity to work with David Byrne immediately after her Strange Mercy tour. And after that tour she went back into the studio to record her current album. It is a punishing schedule to maintain but she obviously has a career plan in mind. I wouldn't be surprised to see a complete change of direction and possibly even a new band for her next album. Think back to the changes she brought in between her second and third albums and that included a change in touring personnel. Perhaps she may even drop the St. Vincent moniker and tour solo. Here she is in 2009 performing a superb cover of the Beatles' Dig A Pony. Great charm and warmth in this performance and some very fine guitar playing as well.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
Was aware of her work ethic etc but not the history and how bad things were. The primavera gig was her best for a festival. Great performance. Burn out looks like the issue.She like a lot of artists seems very intense. All performing is generally an act but early tours and on the DB tour she seemed relaxed and any on stage comments where very cool and with it but the crap for this tour is cringe worthy. One bloke behind us at the olympia gig in Dublin left in disgust when she launched into one of her we are connected speeches.
Dig a pony one have watched many times. Comes across as spaced out novice with huge talent.
Maybe all just a calibrated act. Probably mentioned it before but DB couldn't figure her out after spending a year on the road touring.
At this stage we either need to set up a ST Vincent thread or launch a ST V site for old men.
Nguyen Le's album, Songs of Freedom, was one of the most sheerly entertaining releases of the past few years. Inspired by the rock music that the Vietnamese guitarist grew up listening to, he breathes new life into this very familiar repertoire to produce something that is utterly exhilarating. Thankfully French TV caught his superb band in action at a concert in Paris in 2011. To take one example, the performance of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby (about 21 minutes into this show) is simply intoxicating, full of life and utterly inventive.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
