Rock - what are you listening to?

[jadarin]

[jadarin]

[jadarin]

[cybot]

Still my favourite Mog vinyl. John Peel's introduction is way up in the mix and sounds so poignantly full of life.....We miss you John :(

[cybot]

With their entire back catalogue up for grabs I thought I'd revisit this one from '93. The first track reminds me of Yoo Doo Right by Can. Can't quite believe how good it is. At the time of its release I thought they were going all soft. Boy was I wrong!

[Ivor]

With their entire back catalogue up for grabs I thought I'd revisit this one from '93. The first track reminds me of Yoo Doo Right by Can. Can't quite believe how good it is. At the time of its release I thought they were going all soft. Boy was I wrong!

Great album that, I'd forgotten about it.

[cybot]

With their entire back catalogue up for grabs I thought I'd revisit this one from '93. The first track reminds me of Yoo Doo Right by Can. Can't quite believe how good it is. At the time of its release I thought they were going all soft. Boy was I wrong!

Great album that, I'd forgotten about it.

Which of their other albums would you recommend Ivor? Along with Tabula Rasa I only have two compilations and another one called Half Mensch...

[Ivor]

Great album that, I'd forgotten about it.

Which of their other albums would you recommend Ivor? Along with Tabula Rasa I only have two compilations and another one called Half Mensch...

I'd have to have a look along the shelf Dermot, it's been quite a while!

[cybot]

Great album that, I'd forgotten about it.

Which of their other albums would you recommend Ivor? Along with Tabula Rasa I only have two compilations and another one called Half Mensch...

I'd have to have a look along the shelf Dermot, it's been quite a while!

The past always has a funny way of coming back and biting us :) Though I always laugh at the one of their cover where the horse is having an almighty pee :)

[mcq]

I've been listening to Joanna Newsom's wonderful album, Have One On Me, a great deal recently.  Rather like her previous work, Ys, this took quite some time to absorb.  The reason for this is the lyrical density of the individual songs, which demand the listener's complete attention over quite extended periods.  However, both albums are underpinned by a lightness of touch (as expressed by the childlike wonder of Newsom's vocal phrasings) which distracts the listener's attention away from the complexities of the musical and lyrical undercurrents and draws you in and seduces you to their very human charms.  Also, both albums are sequenced beautifully which enable the listener to track the breadth of the emotional arc of the music from first song to last in an entirely natural way.  The one song that I cannot dislodge from my mind right now is Does Not Suffice, the final track on the album.  

Does Not Suffice is ostensibly about a breakup as contemplated by a woman lying in bed immediately following a heated confrontation with her boyfriend.  And, taken solely on those terms, it is a brilliant achievement, concentrated and moving in its depiction of a failed relationship and the narrator's avowed wish to move on and make a fresh start for herself.  However, the more I hear it, the more convinced I am that this is actually Newsom's musical credo, her personal statement of intent about her artistic ambitions.

I will pack up my pretty dresses.
I will box up my high-heeled shoes.
A sparkling ring, for every finger,
I'll put away, and hide from view.

Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere;
cartouche and tweed, all silver shot —
and everything that could remind you
of how easy I was not.

I'll tuck away my gilded buttons;
I'll bind my silks in shapeless bales;
I'll wrap it all on up, in reams of tissue,
and then I'll kiss you, sweet, farewell.

From the first moment, the tone is set.  This is a lament and farewell for a period of life which is now past in eager anticipation of a more-fulfilling life to come.  She intends to discard all frivolous ornamentation from her work  in favour of something more plain-spoken and true.  There is s sadness to her singing here but there is also a firmness and sense of resolve lurking in the background which will become more audible as the song progresses.  She is savouring her last lingering look at the writing tropes which formerly supported her songwriting and upon which she once set great store.  There are powerful memories here of early, formative success when she first found her feet as a songwriter but she understands that, in order to mature as an artist, she must put aside these sentimental attachments and discover a new vocabulary with which to express her innermost thoughts.

You saw me rise to our occasion,
and so deny the evidence.
You caused me to burn, and twist,
and grimace against you,
like something caught
on a barbed-wire fence.

Now, you can see me fall back here,
redoubled,
full bewildered and amazed.
I have gotten into some terrible trouble,
beneath your blank and rinsing gaze.

The "you" she is addressing here is the artist that she wishes to become, that she is struggling to become, or perhaps an artistic influence that she feels overshadowed by.  The conflict that is simmering within her has reached boiling point and these inner tensions are expressed beautifully by the visual image of Newsom as a mute animal burning and twisting as she fights to free herself from the constricting barbed-wire fence of her restrictive domestic environment.  I am reminded here also of T.S. Eliot's own mesmerising take on the terrors of creative anxiety, The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, and, in particular, the following haunting lines: 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

This struggle to liberate herself has resulted in the "terrible trouble" of a life in creative stasis (perhaps triggered by a haunting, ever-present image of the "blank and rinsing gaze" of a primary artistic influence) where she is forced to look inward and re-evaluate things.  What she is trying to articulate here is a sense of the creative anxiety that besets artists in the formative stages of their development - in the words of William Empson, a progressive "learning of a style from a despair".  They have been exposed to something so powerful that it will not let them rest. In Rainer Maria Rilke's words, "The work of the eyes is done, go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you".  The finest song that I've ever heard that directly references the pain and sacrifice involved in overcoming the inexorable pressure that is exerted by one's creative forebears is Bob Dylan's Visions of Johanna, which, like Newsom's song, is set during a long, sleepless night, the dark night of the soul - "Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?"  

It does not suffice
for you to say I am a sweet girl,
or to say you hate to see me sad
because of you.
It does not suffice,
to merely lie beside each other,
as those who love each other do.

The firmness of mind that informs Newsom's choice of words and the forthright directness with which she sings them is particularly notable here.  She appears to be directly addressing herself as well as her listeners.  The potency and succinctness of the words, "it does not suffice", directly recalls Dylan's repeated references to the Visions of Johanna in the following lines that close the main stanzas in his masterpiece: "These visions of Johanna that conquer my mind/These visions of Johanna that kept me up past the dawn/These visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel/These visions of Johanna are now all that remain".  She shares with Dylan his clarity of thought, his bristling intensity and, most of all, his sheer impatience at the state of things.  You get the sense of a writer gazing long and hard at the words she has written, finding fault in the smallest of details -the placement of a comma or the insertion of a line-break - and finding it all woefully inadequate as a means of articulating the emotions brewing within her and perhaps fearing also that the words will never come, and always looking over her shoulder at her creative forebears and finding herself falling short, a sense of profound self-doubt that Eliot encapsulated in the following lines from Prufrock:

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

It simply does not suffice, this life that Newsom has made for herself.  The well-meaning platitudes of friends and family offer her no consolation.  There always remains, in Patrick Kavanagh's words, "something inside, gnawing away unsatisfied" which must be appeased.  There is a fierceness about the greatest of music that is daunting to the listener on first encounter but must be terrifying for the artist that finds herself inspired.  When thinking about this, I am always reminded of the opening lines of the first Elegy from Rilke's masterpiece, The Duino Elegies, where he equates the seductive beauty of art with the terror of creative anxiety: "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror/which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so/because it serenely disdains to destroy us./Every angel is terrible."

I picture you, rising up in the morning:
stretching out on your boundless bed,
beating a clear path to the shower,
scouring yourself red.

The tap of hangers,
swaying in the closet —
unburdened hooks
and empty drawers —
and everywhere I tried to love you
is yours again,
and only yours.

The song ends with Newsom looking forward to her creative rebirth as she sees herself rising to meet the new day with an eagerness and impatience.  The image of scouring herself red suggests an act of ascetic self-cleansing.  The empty wardrobe signifies a blank canvas from which she can start anew.  We see here an image of liberating solitude, from which Newsom will find all of her life's future creative paths.

I vividly recall the following lines from an interview with Newsom that appeared in The Wire around the time of the release of Ys. "Writing music has been my chief joy and activity for almost my entire life.  And nothing could be more natural to me than writing music.  There are a lot of other aspects of social interaction that I'm bad at, specifically because my entire adolescence was spent playing the harp all the time.  So no matter what happens, the ability to write and play, it's going to be the last thing to go.  They'll have to cut my hands off for that to happen."  It bears repeating that making music of lasting distinction is not simply a lifestyle choice, something to flirt with as a means of acquiring wealth and fame, but something that cuts deeper, and which requires a concentrated and sustained sense of focus throughout one's life.  What I find fascinating about so many artists, especially those who live their lives "under the radar", is the vocational nature of their work.  They may play to ever-dwindling audiences, yet they continue to perform and to work.  They may have reached a certain level of material comfort which would enable them to retire and yet they plough on.  They reman accountable to a sense of their music as their life's work as well as to their creative forebears, whose constant presence - both a blessing and a curse- will not allow them to relax as they try desperately, in Kavanagh's words, to "snatch out of time the passionate transitory", to set down something with deep and lasting emotional resonance that will endure.

"The birds sang in the wet trees
And I listened to them, it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy."

"Wet evening in April" - Patrick Kavanagh