The hard-touring, hard-living Felice Brothers opened for Josh Ritter at The Orange Peel on Monday. In advance of their rowdy set, Ian Felice and Josh “Christmas” Clapton talked to me about a recent fundraiser, mixing electronics with acoustic instruments, playing dates with The Killers, and a possible collaboration with Judy Collins.
The Felice Brothers with Alli Marshall of Mountain Xpress (by Jesse Hamm)
Photographer Rich Orris (all photos in this post are his) noted, early in the Josh Ritter show at The Orange Peel, that Ritter is one musician who makes everything instantly better. And it’s kind of true. Not that Ritter has the power to mend a broken heart or heal the sick or anything like that. But the way he takes the stage with a huge grin, the way he looks so genuinely happy to be there, the way he insists it’s going to be such a fun night and the way he seems to get more energetic, more smiley, more raucously happy as the show goes on — if that doesn’t cure what ails you, it’ll at least make you forget for a couple of hours.
Ritter started the show solo with “Idaho.” When he reached the line, “Ain’t no wolf can sing like me,” a girl in the audience shouted “that’s right,” which made Ritter grin through his lyrics. It was also the first of many wolf references. (He later performed “Wolves,” with a long solo howl, and led the audience on a participatory howl in the rocking and percussive “Rattling Locks.”)
The Royal City Band (bassist Zack Hickman, guitarist Austin Nevins, Sam Kassirer on keys and drummer Liam Hurley) came onstage one at a time during “Southern Pacifica” and finally launched as a complete entity with a big drum sound and heavy keys on “Rumors.” Surrounded by smoke machine clouds and a huge all-seeing eye backdrop (the band’s merch booth included a limited-edition glow-in-the-dark poster of the same design), Ritter pushed his voice to a raspy edge on the verse, “The music’s never loud enough.”
That particular song is one that Ritter has been playing — with full bombast — for years. And yet, each time he’s like a kid who just started his first garage band and cranked the volume to 10. Not that he and his band perform like novices. The show is crisply professional from start to finish. Every stop is clean, every nuance is polished. But there’s the energy of newness, of discovery, of the first flush of success.
Which is probably partly why people love Ritter. Because he’s not jaded. He’s cool in his not-trying-to-be-coolness; he’s bolstered by genuine enthusiasm. And people respond. The Orange Peel was nearly packed on a Monday, a fact which Ritter noted several times, thanking the crowd for coming out. (Even though he’d just sold out two nights at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. And remember he’s touring a breakup album. But Ritter can pull that off.) He’s also smart and funny, reeling off a crazy pseudo-historical myth about the Orange Peel: “This thousand-year-old venue was build on a much-older temple. We’re not sure what. We’re not even sure oranges were involved.”
Later in the show, during a solo break, Ritter dedicated the song “Galahad” to local bookstore Malaprop’s (where two years ago he gave a reading for his novel, Bright’s Passage). “Galahad” is an interesting choice for Malaprop’s — look up the lyrics for a laugh.
Ritter sang five songs from his just-released album, The Beast in its Tracks. Which is, yes, a breakup album. But there’s also a love story in there, and a lot of hope. (Read more about it here.) The musician (and/or his management) made the interesting choice to give away a free download of the album with each concert ticket, a seemingly dubious move until he played that album’s single, “Joy To You Baby,” and the audience sang along. The room was flooded with such a gorgeously twilit and hopeful feel. Calm anticipation.
That calm was a rare moment in an evening filled with electricity and animation. At times, Ritter pogoed around the stage; he played air drums in “Rattling Locks” and shimmied his way through “Right Moves.” That song’s question, “Am I making all the right moves?” is probably the most rhetorical of the show.
So, calm moments were few but sing-along moments were many — “Folk Bloodbath” brought one, and “Kathleen” another. During the latter, Ritter switched guitars mid-song and launched into a rap interlude of sorts in which he recited a letter from a fictional member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who, sick of the explorers, had made his own discovery of a town filled with vegetarians. A place where, “everybody plays Frisbee golf. Everybody has a dog.”
After a short break, the band returned for an encore. Standing in a slice of orange light, Ritter played the achingly sweet “The Temptation of Adam” and then, for the finale, raised the energy level to a fever pitch with “To the Dogs or Whoever.”
It’s worth noting that the set (see below) covered at least a decade of songs and every one stood up beside the others. As a collection they showcased Ritter’s staggering ability as not just a performer but as a songwriter, too. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait two more years before he makes it back to Asheville.
Setlist:
1. Idaho (solo), Animal Years
2. Southern Pacifica, So Runs the World Away
3. Rumors, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter
4. A Certain Light, The Beast in its Tracks
5. Hopeful, The Beast in its Tracks
6. Lillian, Egypt, Animal Years
7. The Curse, So Runs the World Away
8. Joy To You Baby, The Beast in its Tracks
9. New Lover, The Beast in its Tracks
10. Folk Bloodbath, So Runs the World Away
11. Galahad (solo), To the Yet Unknowing World (EP)
12. Snow is Gone (solo), Hello Starling
13. Wings, Hello Starling
14. Evil Eye, The Beast in its Tracks
15. Rattling Locks, So Runs the World Away
16. Wolves, Animal Years
17. Right Moves, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter
18. Kathleen, Hello Starling
Encore:
1. The Temptation of Adam, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter
2. To the Dogs or Whoever, The Historical Conquests Of Josh Ritter
Zimbabwean musician Oliver “Tuku” Mtujudzi and his band, the Black Spirits, have been on tour in the U.S., playing dates from California to Quebec, including a stop at Lake Eden Arts Festival last weekend.
From the start of the band’s set on the LEAF main stage, it was apparent that they were showcasing a different side of the “traditions” theme of the spring festival. LEAF has a long history of bringing impressive world music acts to the stage — from Japanese taiko drummers to Tibetan singer-songwriter Yungchen Lhamo. But Tuku and the Black Spirits’ sound didn’t seem as far flung as it did instantly recognizable. Okay, maybe “instantly recognizable” isn’t the exact phrase. But instantly comfortable, digestible and, most of all, just easy. The kind of music you dance to without thinking about; the kind of music you relax into.
Tuku is a grandfather but moves lithely across the stage, defying gravity. He bounces along with the percussion, his dance moves another texture in the soft and multi-faceted rhythm of each song. There’s a lot of percussion. A kit drum, congas, a rain stick and other auxiliary instruments. And the percussion builds over a definitive drum and bass downbeat, but in building it adds complexity rather than noise, and the buoyant harmonies lift each song even farther from its rhythmic base.
Each member of the band is long and lean, stork-like and graceful. There’s an economy both of instrumentation and movement — they play fluidly and expressively, but also tastefully. No grandstanding, no solo given a note more than it needs, as if anything extra would weigh down the whole meringue of the song. Instead, beat and melody continually pulse while the vocals add bright strokes of color of the sonic canvas.
Songs tend to morph effortlessly from melody into syncopated breaks. The congas pop; Tuku and vocalist/percussionist Sam Felo fall into a galloping synchronized dance while bassist Enock Piroro grins from ear to ear (very un-bassist-like). (Other band members are drummer Tendai Samson Mataure and percussionist/backing vocalist Strovers Maswobe.)
While most of the Black Spirits’ set list is in the band’s native tongue, one prettily emotive song asks, in English, “What does it take to be a hero? Do you have to die to be a hero?” According to press about the band, Tuku prefers education to political advocacy, but the song certainly nods to charges questions about human rights and freedoms. Its delivery, however, is much closer to a lullaby than a fiery blast, with the congas ringing warmly and the easy, boomerang of the rhythm — out and back, out and back like an audible tide — casting a glow over the darkening evening.
As night fell and colored lights glittered, reflected in Lake Eden’s dark water, it was hard to imagine that Oliver Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits’ songs, traveled all the way from Southern Africa, could belong to any place more completely than they seemed to belong to Black Mountain.
Following a very quick set change, Nashville’s Luella and the Sun took the stage and with nothing more than a few bass notes as introduction, launched into “Fly So Free.” The band (drummer John Radford, guitarist Joe McMahan, bassist Adam Bednarik and vocalist Melissa Mathes, aka Luella) is based in gospel and blues. And by based I mean deeply steeped. Steeped to a bitter and pungent brew.
All photos by Rich Orris
“Fly So Free” is a perfect example of exactly how Luella and the Sun deconstructs Gospel, distills its soulful essence and uses that to infuse raw, gritty garage rock with an unholy wildness that feels as righteous as it is dangerous. It’s something about the muscle of the drum, the hypnotic thrum of the bass and the snarl of the guitar. And the auxiliary percussion, rattling and hissing like a basket of serpents. 
But mostly it’s Mathes’ voice. At turns girlish and haunting, pure and feral, she doesn’t sing so much as uses her voice like a whip. Or a lasso. Or a spinning top. Hers is a good voice. A great voice. But she doesn’t sing with the care and preciousness of a great singer. She sings, instead, like she’s on fire. Like she’s exorcising demons.
The band moved through a stripped-down number of fast handclaps over which Mathes spat lyrics and danced savagely in her dress of shimmering plastic six-pack rings (McMahan looked formidably handsome in a red and black smoking jacket) and moved on to “Light in the Sky.” That song was even more mesmerizing and voodoo-dark, and textured with feedback and raga-like chord progressions.
Fast songs, like the galloping, shimmying “Train Train,” showcase the barely-contained frenzy that Luella and the Sun holds at its nucleus. But in slower offerings, like the gorgeously agonized “Ruler of My Heart” (an Irma Thomas cover) and the end-of-the-party slow dance, “Universe of My Heart,” the group can stretch out and fully explore each note, each nuance. It was in the latter that, while the range and lithe ability of Mathes’ vocal was lost on the antsy crowd, she really let her voice go to this high and airy place, reaching for artistry and emotion instead of pop polish.
Luella and the Sun closed out its set with a cover of Blind Willie McTell’s “We Got To Meet Death One Day.” A slow opening morphed quickly into heavy stomp played nasty and spooky, building in its fierce swagger until, at the final moments, the instruments fell away leaving only Mathes’ voice floating like a pretty apparition through the air.
Desire Lines from Glasgow’s Camera Obscura (out on June 3) is a wonderfully breezy, sun-dappled collection. I’d go far to say pop confection, only the bouncy, pretty, litheness of it is built on a solid foundation. It’s lyrically strong and musically tight — even as it drifts and frolics as easily as kite. A kite is a wide sky with the vaguest notion of a dark cloud looming in the distance.
Part of the magic is in the few atonal notes, an artistic stroke of just the wrong color at just the right time. Most of the magic is in Tracyanne Campbell’s vocal, singing “We’re gonna listen to ‘Kokomo,’” referencing The Beach Boys in “This Is Love (Feels Alright),” a song that manages to be almost more beachy than the Beach Boys.
“Troublemaker” is pitch-perfect ’60s-era pop-rock, folky around the edges but run through some soft-focus Instagram filter to make it all pleasantly worn and airy and nostalgic in that 20/20 hindsight sort of way. Like, you know how vintage reproduction clothing looks better than actual vintage clothing? It’s because the proportions have been reworked to fit our modern aesthetic. The same is true with the vintage feel of these songs. They’re the best parts of retro fused — grafted — to the best parts of modern instrumentation and production for something that feels old in the way we wish old things felt.
Camera Obscura has a a great sense of those kind of sighing long notes and sweeping melodies that feel emotional in a personal way. Nostalgic. Possibly for a time that never way, for a love that never happened. And yet there’s a languidness — again, much of it’s in Campbell’s voice — that allows the nostalgia to float free of drama. And Carey Lander’s ethereal background vocal further lifts the equation, making it a thing so lofty and light and translucent. “Lying to those who know you the best, keeping your secret close to your chest to die in the arms of a twenty year-old,” Campbell sings on “William’s Heart,” which recalls Everything But The Girl — but breezier. 
There’s a hint of the personal in these 12 songs. “New Year’s Resolution” (“I’ve been cool with you. The sooner you admit it, I will too,” the chorus admits) and “I Missed Your Party” (an apology for the crime in the title) dance along a thing line of sincerity and winking satire. But there’s no reason not to take Desire Lines at face value. It doesn’t play like a mockery of the tender emotion it ever so delicately stirs.
And there are less tender moments, too: “Do It Again” picks up the pace with prancing percussion and electric guitars. Campbell’s voice is still serene, pop-pretty and sepia-tinted. But also modern. It’s a modern song, a dance song, a party song. “Every Weekday” is another upbeat track, lilting and underscored by island rhythms. Island-inspired. Bright notes, steel-pan-like, pulse beneath the melody.
But as fun as these prance-around-the-garden-party tracks are, Camera Obscura is at its best on the drowsy, swaying, almost aching slow dances. The album’s title-track — also its last — follows that formula but adds a mournful steel guitar and the precipitous staccato of shakers. The equation adds up to not-quite-Americana, but Campbell’s almost-plaintive vocal could work well in an alt-county song.
“Fifth In Line To The Throne” is another stand out, built on the melodrama of The Cranberries and the twilit magic of Sixpence None The Richer, but with the most gorgeous wafts of background vocals, the clear and oddly (but wondrously-placed) piano part and the nimble triple-beats of drum sticks on rims. “You treat me like a queen but like a queen I don’t know when I’ll be slain,” Campell sings. There’s a hint of anguish, but then there’s a gust of salt air, the cry of terms, the bob of waves, the bright slant of sun on water.
I thought I’d share this Nosaj Thing remix of How to destroy angels’ “Keep it together.” That band (Trent Reznor and his wife Mariqueen Maandig) were just announced as part of the lineup for this October’s Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit. And, while Nine Inch Nails is often too unrelentingly dark for me, I find the drone-y, slow, hypnotic quality of How to destroy angels — and especially Maandig’s ethereal vocal — to be pleasantly dark. The Nosaj Thing remix of this song really balances out the qualities I like best, while trading out some of the think, bassy, fuzzy electronics and the creepy, industrial guitar for a crisper, more open sound. The bass is intact, as is Maandig’s haunting lyric, but gone is the grind and doom, replaced with a clean and modern backdrop of minimalist beats and precipitous keyboard notes.
Here’s your Monday video: Joseph Arthur’s “All The Old Heroes,” a new song off the upcoming The Ballad of Boogie Christ (by josepharthurofficial).
It’s long. A bit of a saga. But also wonderfully rendered, and the video, too. It’s a photo montage of heroes which I, personally, went into thinking 1) No one tells me who my heroes are and 2) There aren’t enough for a seven-plus minute song. Happy to report I was wrong on both counts. Joey Ramone, Shirley Temple, Super Man, Gandhi, Twiggy, Duke of Hazard, Bob Marley, Captain Kangeroo. They’re all there. And you watch them flash by and you think, “Our heroes are those people who show us how to really go for it.” That’s all. But to figure out how, as a human in this world, to really go for it is to understand our purpose. At least that’s what I believe.
And I think that’s what Joseph Arthur is doing. Going for it. I’ve yet to listen to all of Boogie Christ, but if this song is any indication, than I’m looking forward to it.
Also, I should mention that Joe is currently holding a PledgeMusic campaign to raise funds toward studio debt, touring and marketing/promotion around Boogie Christ. Donate here
I think that singer-songwriter Josh Ritter is not only a talented musician, but inspirational for his authenticity and his enthusiasm for all artistic endeavors. And he’s endlessly quotable, too. As I was working on story about his upcoming Asheville show — he’s on tour in support of his new album, The Beast In Its Tracks — I realized there just were too many insightful, inspirational (and sometimes just plain funny) quotes to not transcribe the full conversation.
Alli Marshall: You’re a singer-songwriter, a bandleader and a novelist. We’ve talked about all of that in the past…
Josh Ritter: There’s no consequence if you do something wrong, if you make something that people don’t like. I enjoy being around people, in general, in life, who are willing to take chances without being so precious about it. Art is a biological thing that comes out of us. We’re biological, we’re messy. And that’s the stuff that’s usually the most entertaining and cool. I don’t see why we should just do music or prose, or anything. Mostly, it should just be fun, you know?
I never felt like I was going to be the guy who was winning Grammy awards and being on the cover of Rolling Stone. You have to have different hair than I do, and wear skinnier pants. I definitely come at it from the idea that making art is something that, historically, you do so you can make more art. There’s not too much more than that except just trying to have a life like everybody else.
Are you saying that having a life like everybody is the goal?
That is the goal. I do believe you should have the chance to have a family and not be like what you see in movies, being a musician on the road, having trouble. You’re all tortured. It seems like people make the best stuff when they’re happiest, and they’re happiest when they’re involved with a group of people like family and friends who are supportive of each other. You shouldn’t have to go without because you’re some sort of rider on the range.
Yeah, but I also believe that we really need to see musicians and artists live extraordinary lives. They’re are our archetypes and our heroes. We need for them to remind us of our own potential.
We all should be lucky enough to see people in our lives who are going for it. Being on stage is like life. You’re on stage for two hours. Stuff falls over, shit falls apart, words get forgotten, a lot of fuel is expended on stage. Things happen that aren’t expected and everybody rolls with it. The show isn’t over if I forget something, or if I should fall into the drum set. The show goes on and that makes it exciting. If you’re playing in a place where the power goes out, you don’t put away your instruments, you figure out a way to finish the show. I need to see that when I see somebody else play because I need to know that my life is going to go on if something happens.
I wouldn’t have gotten into music if I hadn’t seen someone like Neil Young. I think that’s really, really cool. What he’s doing is amazing, and how does he do that. Or Tom Petty. How does Tom Petty write a song? When I was a kid, we’d watch the NBA finals. I loved the Pistons. I’d never see the end of a game, because before it ended, I go out and start playing basketball, I was so fired up.
But I also think, the fact is, I can’t do any math. I had to charm my way through 15 years of math, because I can’t do it. I admire, so much, anyone who can sit down and do these thing. I think they’re these superheroes who do things that may seem mundane, but everybody’s an artist at something.
I’ve been thinking about the way you use rhythms — that sort of ragtime feel — and how you write, too. How what you do is so intrinsically your own style, but it’s also — and I don’t mean this to sound unkind — really white. You know? Which could seem square. By sticking to your own sound, I think you appeal to people and you’ve earned a great following. But I wonder if there was ever a point when you wanted to sound different, if you were concerned with coming across as cooler, for lack of a better word.
People go out and chase followers, and they do all kinds of crazy things, trying to be a leader by making people like them. I’ve always been a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt — I think he was the most original person to become president. He just didn’t how how to be anything different. He trusted that whatever it was that he was, was good enough for what he needed to do. I’ve always looked up to him for that. And he’s a weirdo. Truly a weirdo who appreciated his weirdness.
With music, there are all different kinds of ways you can go. I live in Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. The hippest place in the world. It’s very easy to start to second guess what you do with all the music around and all the fashion and all that stuff. I tend to dress fairly plainly because that, to me, feels more true that buying a new set of things every week. I feel the same way with the music. I’m not going to be a flag, I’m going to be a pole. My music comes from a deep, deep well of American music. Scott Joplin — which was very black music. And all the stuff coming out of Storyville and ragtime, which, got appropriated by all kinds of people. Merle Travis, for one. Elizabeth Cotton and Odetta, who was the one I learned to finger-pick from. She had an amazing finger-picking style, and she’s a great arranger. I feel like everything becomes an influence at some point. But I do think that by sticking to your guns and doing things if they feel right, hopefully you can be a rock in the current.
I thought it was interesting that the record has 13 tracks, and I wondered if that was intentional.
With anything in terms of the record, like how it was set up, I tried to go chronologically. But it just ended up that [13] was as many tracks as I felt like it really took, and I put them in the order that I thought would make a good record, but it weren’t necessarily adhering closely to the storyline. I really thought I’d start out from the depths, from the absolute hole, and move outward from there so the end would be this hopeful ending. But really, it just didn’t work out that way. It didn’t flow from one song to the next. An album and a show are somewhat the same: they should have a rise and fall and kind of a narrative. This only felt right if “Certain Light” came after “Evil Eye.” It felt more fun that way. It’s amazing how an album can drag if it’s not track listed right. That’s something I really enjoy doing. I love doing set lists, too. If you get them right, they really skip along and you can do all kinds of things you wouldn’t be able to do if you were playing long boring song after long boring song. This way, you can stick in some long boring songs and it’ll still be alright.
I don’t know, Josh. That sounds a lot like math. Like some special field of math.
(Laughs.) Yeah, that’s as close as I can get.
Honestly, I was kind of afraid to listen to this album at first, just because I didn’t want to go to a dark place. But it’s not dark. It’s actually really beautiful and even fun.
When I started writing, they were angry, angry angry songs. I was thinking about this tradition of breakup records and one of the things I found that I really didn’t like about a lot of them is that they’re unrelenting. It stops being like, “I want to tell you something,” and becomes someone who knocks on your door and starts yelling at you. Or, like someone’s torturing a raccoon. I recorded some that I didn’t put on the record. Some, like “Nightmares” I put on, that I thought were important to have. But I also thought, if this is a record like a time frame. I can’t leave off the happy ones. If the happy ones are there, they must be as much a part of this time as the sad ones. I just didn’t want to cherry pick the emotions.
I figure it’s good to have some happier songs, too, because when you go on tour and play them night after night, you might not want to revisit those sad memories. Or does writing and recording the songs help you transcend those experiences?
It does. Once they’re written and recorded and you’ve crossed that Rubicon and they’re out there in the world… If I had the constitution that broke down when I sing songs, I wouldn’t be able to do it. There is a lot of pain. There’s an almost painful amount of happiness in some. I think the only way to do it is, once you’re there on stage, is to sing to people, not sing for them. I don’t want to be on stage to be different from everybody. I want to be part of it. Maybe it’s the only way I can be part of a group without being painfully embarrassed.
My office window looks out on an Urban Outfitters store. Lucky me. On a good day I can watch 20 year-olds with complicated facial hair shop for plaid shirts and red pants, because the store’s upstairs has floor-to-ceiling windows. Anyway. I was looking out my window today and noticed that the downstairs window display reads:
S>U>B
P<O<P
and has lots of records (the vinyl ones) and record players. I was like, what?! So I looked it up:
So, yeah. Sub Pop is currently Urban Outfitter’s featured label. And the label is apparently celebrating its 25th anniversary by releasing a seven-track mixtape with the retail company. It includes Sunny Day Real Estate, Red Red Meat and Codeine, among others.
I mean, this is kind of weird, right? This is the label that signed Nirvana, and The Shins, and Fleet Foxes. It was founded in Seattle in the mid-’80s. It was cool in that truly cool, understated, totally-not-caring-about-being-cool way, which is always way cooler than things and people who actively try to be cool.
But releasing a mixtape through a store that shills exactly the sort of self-conscious cool that Sub Pop seemed to be so above for so long? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a way to introduce good bands to a wider audience. Or something. What do you think?
Local musician/composer Danny Peck (aka dep) is prolific — that’s nothing new. But his most recent album, the moody/breathless/tender/atmospheric Ever Looming is something special. “I truly feel as if this is a culmination of my entire creative journey up to this point,” Peck says on his website. “I’ve spent the last 16 years finding my voice as an artist, producer and musician, and this album really feels, to me, like the music I’ve been wanting to write since I started.”
I was just reading a quote by Neil Gaiman about creativity: “Saying that there are enough writers out there, enough directors out there, enough people with points of view, well, yeah, there are. But none of them are you, And none of those people are going to make the art that you are going to make. None of them are going to change people and change the world in the way that you could change it.” It’s a great quote. But Peck says the same thing far more eloquently (and without words) from his opening track, “Stretched for Home.”
The song is so pretty that it almost hurts. Not initially. It starts off with slow, round tones. Grey dawn, gentle rain. Chimes and organ, and then the spritely jog of strings. Strings that dance and others that float, and still other instruments that swirl as the rhythms and patterns of the song grow more complex. But not necessarily tighter. This is a spiraling in, but not a tightening, which is kind of a metaphor for spiritual growth and the process of gaining expertise. We spiral around a theme, gaining increasingly more subtle knowledge with each pass until, eventually, what was a single organ in a vast room becomes an entire symphony playing inside a single shining raindrop.
“Last Known Surroundings” features Stephanie Morgan on vocals. It’s the album’s only vocal track, yet even here what is sung is not lyrics but sounds. Morgan’s voice is another instrument, another texture for Peck to layer. The track builds into a gale, its staccato notes and the distant thunder of percussion coming in waves and howling crests.
But even as the songs build to explosive apexes, they are also exercises in control. Or, not control so much but discernment. How to hold the kite string so that the kite dances on the wind without tearing free or crashing to earth. There’s that kind of deft balance at play. And a lissome touch throughout. In the heaviest blasts of “Steep Hills of Tears,” which is all upheaval and tumult, there’s a lightness that lends ballast.
That song is followed by the more delicate “The Sun Has Gone Dim,” a lush orchestration of chimes and strings. And there are other quieter songs — “A Faithful Reprieve” marries dreamy soundscapes with spacey, slightly glitchy warbles. “Eg Anda,” the album’s longest track, builds slowly, taking its time through snare drum rolls and soft-focus fields of melody. But even at its emotional pinnacle, the song maintains its ethereal glimmer. And the final song, “Album Blank Pages,” is a warm immersion in golden-hued tones.
“5am,” near the end of the album, is a standout track. The poignancy of the violin by guest musicians David Sabogal is remarkable. Violins are emotive instruments, but Sabogal lets his go nearly ragged in places, conveying feeling through that raw and real voice, that instrumental hoarseness.
“Burnout Awakening” is another standout. Low strings are paired with thick drums. The rhythms builds in velvety washes that feel more noble than urgent. There’s a thrum of static, a march of snare and the resonance of a bell. It’s a hero’s journey. “Still One Direction” shares much of that sense of largess. Again, the beat is a key player — here, it’s both tribal and military. The fuzzed-out melody seems to leap from and then melt back into its dark netherworld. And then the last minute or so — My god.
As I write it, it sounds ridiculous to say that Peck is, in essence, retooling classical music for electronica, and for the 21st century. Because of course there are electronica-classical and modern-classical composers. And still. There’s something here. Peck’s quest for truth and self-realizion, his absolute dedication to artistry, his pop-melody prowess, his unique palette.
What I said earlier about Looming being so pretty that it almost hurts is also not quite right. It actually hurts a lot, and I’m not even sure why. The music hits at a place of nostalgia, a memory of something not yet come to pass. Something wonderful and dearly missed, but also something sublime. It touches on the parts of being human that are jagged and stormy, hard to contain and explain but, as soon as they’re recognized, absolutely imperative.
But this is what music (and all great art, really) is meant to give us. Some information about what it is to be human, and some sense of the greater purpose beyond day-to-day mundaneness. And greater connection — to nature, to spirit, to those around us. To hope. Possibly to despair, too — to our capacity to despair, because Looming is made dynamic by its bruises as well as its gasps of wonder — but it’s an album that returns ultimately to hope, over and over.
Album cover art by Janice Peery.
fashion. music. fashion. music.
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