before and after eternity

lot been goin on. you can see by my (just, finally, updated, but already out-of-date) sidebar that i've been doing some diligent collecting these past months - i'll have plenty to say about many of those recent acquisitions (many of them excellent); hopefully i'll get around to saying it, for now the emboldening will have to suffice. i recently contributed what will likely be my last bits of semi-amateur music-scribing for a while, in the form of some blurbs for the styjuke's track-by-track dissection of the radio one. established 1967. album/covers series. not an overly worthwhile thing to write about - forty top uk chart acts covering songs from 1967-2006; even on such a grand scale, with a nearly limitless wealth of implied possibilities, these kinds of things seem almost guaranteed not to produce any music of lasting value - but an enjoyable project nonetheless.

stylus magazine and most of its satellites, including the singles jukebox, are shutting down after this wednesday. i've actually known this for a couple months from certain inside sources, but it seems to have been a successfully kept secret until very recently - quite an accomplishment in itself on the 'nets, which i take (maybe fancifully) as just a small indication
of how beloved and respected stylus was, by loyalists inside and out. to join the cortège of eulogists who will doubtless continue to fill the commentboxes (also here) for the next two days and beyond...i too am certainly going to miss stylus sorely - it has meant a great deal to me in the past three years or so, even if my tenure as a writer - first as staff reviewer, more recently an occasional jukebox blurbist - there was fairly undistinguished. [eh...well short anyway; re-reading my handful of contributions now i'm reminded that i can in fact write a pretty damn decent record review, in fine stylus style, when i can actually be bothered to take the time. this is probs the best thing i did for 'em, although i made it into their farewell roundup - to my surprise - via my rare, impassioned, lone comment on this piece. heh. i'm sort of touched.]

but as it happens i'm moving on to, i guess, semi-pro music-scribing, for the only outlet that rivals stylus for my attentions and affections...well actually, in case you haven't already guessed/don't know (and, er, if "you" care), i'll hold off on telling you where for another minute, 'til i'm actually published. though it did occur to me today (not entirely for the first time), that if i couldn't make a decent go of it as a music writer in an environment as welcoming and open-minded as stylus (albeit uncompensated), it's probably just not something i'm sufficiently compelled to do... eh, but here i am. so here i go.

folk
more i wanted to say about folk and songwriting. it keeps coming up - maybe one of those october things. was gonna eta that devon sproule piece below (which ended both before i'd gotten everything out and long after it should have) but better to just keep it flowin'. anyway the night after i wrote that i discussed those ideas, and extensions of them, with a friend who almost uncannily predicted several comparisons just before i drew them - the magnetic fields as exponents of what i'm calling classicist or formalist songwriting, and more interestingly joni mitchell as an analog/precedent for what devon does: as a songwriter/lyricist, but simultaneously as a vocalist/guitarist, because point being that their musical creations don't fit neatly within those lines; the elements all combine in idiosyncratic, virtuosic constructions that, though they could certainly be performed by others, would lose something integral in the translation.

we (my friend and i) mostly meant the joni of blue, i think, specifically - even as soon after that as court and spark, the music had moved well beyond what could straightly be called "folk," i think (and her writing was if anything less classicist, despite perhaps some literary formalism.) her earlier days of course had their share of classicism, or, at least, classics, in the trad-folk, campfire-sing sense. (not that even these entirely fit the straightforward, economical model of formalism i've been hawking.) (ok, i'm actually pretty ignorant of mitchell's music beyond those two albums and mingus, so i'll stop talking about her, and try to rectify that.)

it's not like devon's work is entirely lacking in formal structure, either - "let's go out," particularly, stands out as an excellent 32-bar aaba (one reviewer rightly pegs it as 'her own jazz standard.') and that's not to mention her earlier work either, the two albums she released, under her first name only, back we (she and i) were in our teens (i like how the amg reviewers point out that she's more like ani difranco than britney spears), in the immediately post-lilith era, when she was hanging with the likes of dave matthews band and, yknow, being a teenager - albums she seems to have (rather adorably; also understandably) attempted to bury. [a little bird told me that although she claims they're "out of print" to any prospective buyers, there are in fact has stacks of them in her mom's basement.]

i haven't heard them, so i don't know. but do i gather that one thing which sets her later "mature" [=early 20s] work apart is also the thing which most markedly separates it from blue-era joni: a pronounced rootsiness. which can be a stripe of authenticity, general speaking, but more specifically and germanely sets it up as folk music in a way that is more ambiguous with, e.g., blue (which could be called folk, but doesn't signify it nearly so overtly, and really oughtta be labeled "singer/songwriter" if anything should, since it practically originated s/s as we know it.) funny thing about that, actually - a modicum of country/blues/hillbilly/even jazz (in dev's case) signifiers (instrumentation, vocal stylings, general ramshackleness, what-have-you) helps to establish something as folk(s)y (those being musics of the people)...but too much of those things and you're already off in a different direction: genre. (i wanna say something like folk isn't so much a style as a mode, but i don't even really know what that means.)

and that's the thing about dev - she's got, if anything, more of that backwoods, ol'-timey flair than you could ask for (and with nary a hint of affect; lilith-pop closet-skeletons notwithstanding), and her songs fit beautifully into that aesthetic, in lyrical and musical content, but structurally they seem to be something fundamentally other - more in the realm of a artsy-poppy literary mitchell or newsom or will sheff (okkervil river) or maybe even springsteen (?) than a traditionalist/lyrical-minimalist like lucinda williams or patty griffin or ryan adams or perhaps loudon wainwright or ron sexsmith. which seems like something a little unique. at least i'm struggling to come up with parallels. erin mckeown comes to mind (as sharing a lot in common with devon), though distillation leans more formalist, grand is rockier, and i haven't heard her last couple.

what else? i'd come up with some other examples for the kind of songwriting i was and have been describing, in addition to stephin merrit, andrew gregory, carsie blanton, and perhaps john hiatt (whom i don't know well at all):
• edith frost (particularly her most recent album - but: she does a poor job of conveying that crucial 'folk' intimacy/rapport in concert - she just seems like such tentative a presence)
• much of beck's sea change album (in such marked contrast to most of his lyric-writing before or since as to arouse suspicion - which is partially why i've given him so much flak for it over the years...even though there are admittedly a couple gems. actually, his failure to connect convincingly live is probably more of the reason.)
• well john darnielle, indeed - albeit in style more often than substance (which is often more abstruse, but get lonely, especially, peels back those layers to become, by contrast, shocking in its starkness. and he certainly delivers the personal-magnetism goods live. he supposedly denies being "folk," but he can suck it.)
• some of will oldham's stuff. loudon, probably, but in a clunky/sappy way (eh, i just don't like him much.) maybe some early billy bragg (but i doubt it.)

but it's hard. none of these are stellar examples, and frankly what i'm getting at is something that probably happens pretty rarely, and probably never consistently across a whole body of work. i want to set out this dichotomy [succinct/effusive, structured/fluid, perspicacious/evocative, pithy/poetic, direct/discursive, universalist/idiosyncratic] that speaks in theory to my sense of what traditionalist folk writing, rigorously defined, wants to be (viz., the first of each binary in that list), but of course in practice most songwriting falls in between most if not all of these pairs of poles - a majority of good songwriting draws from both strains, intertwining as necessary. so it's hard to single out examples, particularly without actually discussing specific lyrics. and i'm thinking it's particularly hard to stick entirely within either column in a way that's both engaging (not boring) and effective (not pointless.) which may be why it's so impressive to hear either done well.

deejaying
i've been djing a bit. did one party last weekend (the night before mine), where there wasn't a whole lot of dancing, but what there was was enjoyable: first a cute couple grooving to motown; later the predictable whooping it up for madonna and prince - but they disappeared back into the kitchen when i slid that into some peppy italo; finally a bit of h.c.g.d.a. to harder-edged club pop and jungle/d&b schtuff - a guy who clearly knew told me i was "too good for my own good." awshux. it was one of my more fun, fluid, flawless recent sets if i do say so.

on saturday, the second of three costume parties this weekend (i barely noticed the music at the first, except for the romantics' funky "walking in my sleep" downstairs and old 97s upstairs), i djed what i knew would be the most rollicking dance-party since...the last time i played at the walton house - the dancers didn't disappoint. one of them asked me what the soul songs were that i played, so i e-mailed her this list:

laura lee - i need it just as bad as you
tyrone davis - can i change my mind?
tommy roe - sweet pea
stevie wonder - signed sealed delivered
temptations - i can't get next to you
sharon jones and the dap-kings - tell me
candi staton - i'd rather be an old man's sweetheart (than to be a young man's fool)
dusty springfield - lost
katherine mcphee - love story

which was one entire set (i think that's all of it) - i tended to stick with one genre at a time that night more than i often like to do (from there - roughly - to chart-pop to massive dance jams to some electronica then roundabout to some '80s favorites and then more recent uk/scandinavian stuff, and even a little set of rock at the end.) some very good requests, and i think i played all them, usually right away (sort of a challenge/point of pride): "sweet pea" was a request (that was pretty leftfield - glad i happened to have it with!), later the roots, justice (i played a different cut than i'd intended so i played two more later), "challah-back girl," "cock-rock," and michael jackson. several people asked that, and i was a bit hesitant, but i'd kind of known all along that i was going to play "thriller" - so i did, and it was undoubtedly the pinnacle moment of the party. so, excellent.

[strange as it may sound, i don't really know michael jackson, outside of the obvious singles (of which there are many) - i don't have any of his albums, even though they're always around and are very manifestly both good and important. i suppose i've sort of been holding them in reserve them for those very reasons - no reason to hurry, really. at the third party of the weekend i chatted with a longtime mj fan who helped convince me that the time may be soon...]

"thriller" went right into rjd2's "the horror," which went over quite well. i was also very happy to play "frankenstein" (edgar winter - not the whole thing), adult.'s "nausea" (just got 12"!), "like a pen," cerrone's "supernature," black box's "everybody everybody" (thrift store pickup), and two tracks each from blackout (which went over v. well) and in rainbows (which didn't exactly - thought "bodysnatchers" might work as a dance jam but no dice; "reckoner" was my last song, and they did some nice improvy things to it.) i specifically bought a dennis yost and classics iv greatest hits lp that afternoon so that i could play "spooky," but of course i forgot to play it...oh well.

status
stalled out on the mixtape front - which is cool, for now. i do want to upload an existing dj-mix or two but have been having trouble finding a frustration-free way to share 'em. am more or less waiting on making more until i get some kind of laptop set-up worked out - have been playing around with traktor but it's going slowly. most of my cd collection is in boxes now - save 400 in two binders for djing, and 96 i guess in another for home listening. and of course the fifty or so that i've bought or otherwise acquired in the last two months (and if the sidebar is to be believed only sixteen of those were in september, all in one fell swoop on a brilliant a.k.a. day.)

actually, i don't think i've bought anything at a.k.a. since - in well over a month that is - though i have stopped in there. branching out, then - finding some excellent stuff at long in the tooth (on 20th and sansom) which has a tremendous amount of character despite an odd layout - definite focus on true-blue (for want of a better word) rockist tastemaker territory - punk, vintage indie, pedigreed country, jazz, '60s garage/psych and folk-rock... got some girl-group comps there too, which seems to fit in as well. prices not too bad either. have also made some cautious stops at th!nk music, the new a.k.a. only in that it's next-door to my new work-place, which has an equally bad layout without the redeeming features (they even sort used records alphabetically with new, ew), but managed to get some nice indie gapfillers. finally, i redeemed all my volunteer credit at the marvelous for a grab-bag of whatsit. otherwise, did some carefully plotted 'net shopping in the weeks leading up to my birthday (that's allowed, right?), among other things, expanding and consolidating various recent explorations in genre, and prepping my self for my new writing gig.

hm, how 'bout i stop talking about buying records? maybe i'll get around to talking about the music on them. or maybe i'll at least talk about the new britney and radiohead albums - those are pretty much the big news of the month, aren't they? since i'm all about being relevant. both are about 43 minutes long - bit too much for them to fit on a cd-r together, which is too bad b/c blackout rainbows has some good artistic possibilities. also both are quite good, but i'll give you a hint: one's better than the other. and it's not the one dave bedbug thinks. oh yeh, speaking of, teenpop is finally starting to perk up for '07 - save hilarity, rihanna, and ashley t., there'd been precious little action up until a month or so ago. and i may just be ready to listen to some more of it. digital-wise, i've been processing a handful of enjoyable things recently, one of the better of which, in case i don't get to mention it again, is tmbg's cast your pod to the wind. what the christ. what the devil.

one more recent obsession: "one sound" by knife in the water. dusty semi-country minimalism. nine minutes plus. same progression just repeated and repeated, sometimes with verses. organ harmonizations just so-slightly off, never quite resolving they way they should, but growing familiar enough that you almost don't notice - the unsettling rendered inconspicuous through desensitization. "i want to fall right back to sleep/to dive back in the sheets." hypnotic. hmm now.

devon sproule will save your soul

haven't been seeing a lot of shows lately (there have been a bunch that i might haps have gone to, but didn't care quite enough to go by myself), but no way was i gonna miss a frustratingly rare philly performance by this Virginny (not virginy) gal, whom i first heard/saw the epiphany before last - i think she's been back in the interim, but i was out of town. anyway, never miss her. if you get the chance to miss her, just don't do it!

even though this show was "in the round" with three others - which turned out to mean four folkers on stage with their 'coustics, going down the line and each singing a song in turn, surprisingly little roundness to it, really, devon was pretty much the only one who tried to add some harmonies to the others' choruses. (there was also a whistling meme.) she was also the only one who broke out of the demurely self-effacing/adulatory mode of 'tween-song banter ("wow, you're so talented, how can i ever follow that up!" "i don't think i know that many chords!") which quickly got a bit tired, albeit cute. not that she was impolite - and she was suitably complimentary of her peers - she just wasn't so earnest about it all (like, insisting that she spells "devon" the correct way) in a way that got her cast and played up as the kooky [and/or] drunk one. (which she certainly was, too - best moment was when she raced to the bathroom and back in between someone else's songs, and half-admitted/half-boasted: "i didn't wash my hands!") point being, she was by far the awesome one of the four, and you could tell she kind of knew it too.

not that the others were bad - though i was mildly pained by one john francis, who veered from overweeningly solemn to clumsily saccharine, often in worrisomely strangulated voice (hurt too that he went after d.s. each time. possibly this wasn't a good venue for him tho.) the other devin was more intriguing, did political reasonably well (also, at all); nice "end of the world as we know it" pastiche. anyway he had a nerdy-goofy personable presence which made his songs easy enough to take.

but in particular i enjoyed carsie blanton's mastery of a certain straightforward, but witty, style of writing (about relationships, almost inevitably) that is a lot of what i like in folk music - you get it the first time through, there's a set-up that's either subverted (in a way you forgot to remember to expect) or else not (which may be harder to make work, but can be more satisfying) - anyway; crafted, crafty and formalist (which is only almost to say formulaic, but in a good way, like a "well-written blues.") it's something that happens in other forms too of course - i'm struggling to think of practitioners but stephin merrit comes to mind, and some john darnielle (though that's usually less straightforward)...actually i'm really surprised i'm having so much trouble with this. oh, john hiatt maybe? anyway, not to get sidetracked into a whole discussion about lyrics (though i'd like to have it later when i marshal some more examples - but do you get what i'm saying?)

it's an economy of language - not necessarily few words, but each word being overt in its purpose. songs that are simple enough in their construction that you can remember them easily (for campfire/cartrip singing, especially), possibly even after just one hearing; narrative/linear enough that you can remember the sequence - indeed that the sequence effectively creates the content of the song; and witty and distinctive enough that you want to remember them (rhyming/wordplay is crucial here - it's often where the craftiness comes in, and is also a memory aid), even if remembering is almost beside the point, is just a way of saving/savoring the moment of initial encounter.

because that's the fundamental act of folk music, more, i think, than other musics - the songwriter sharing the song, presenting it, like a piece of handicraft, like telling a story with a practiced, finely-tuned delivery. "it's all folk music," they say, right, cuz it's all made by folks, but to me that's where the folkiness of it comes in - folks playing songs for other folks (and the "songs" part is important, it's not just "music"), in a context of the everyday, a relationship that has to do with shared humanity - and there's that folk[="craft"]/art distinction, too. not that folk can't be arty, for sure - definitely this interpretation is not very coterminous with stylistic/cultural/marketing-based understandings of the genre.

to head off this thorniness (thorn off this headiness?), let me say that what i think i'm actually doing here is trying to justify to myself why i am not an especial devotee of the folk. (at least in its contemporary state.) i.e., that its essence stems from live performance, and i, ultimately, am a recorded-music guy. [whoa - 'nother new can of worms?] don't know if that's a good 'splanation, but it'll do, because we are getting way off from the point of this post, which is that devon sproule rules (that does not rhyme btw) and is awesome.

and btw what she does is not the kind of songwriting i was describing before. (actually i'm not really sure if carsie blanton does that either - i can't really decide if anybody does. oh wait, andrew gregory does; he really does. "shades of john prine?" dunno.) no, devon writes wordy, florid, meandering lyrics, often self-consciously literary, but just as like to be colloquial and off-the-cuff, either way full of precise, lucidly evocative details, typically of the homespun/folksy variety. not at all unlike joanna newsom, really (in style, though usually not in substance.) exactly like the kind of poems that i don't tend towards (i'm more inclined to poems like the songs i described above - pointy, shapely, snappy)...possibly because they ask more of the reader...except that hers are just so lovely i don't mind, and i want to drink them in.

especially when she comes up with a doozy of a musical setting for them, a single simple titular vocal hook ("(baby) does the day feel long?" "(baby) let's go out"), or a whole-cloth stunner of a chorus melody ("plea for a good night's rest" - that one's been haunting me.) more typically her tunes meander to match her words, without choruses to speak of; her unshakable appeal probably comes less from self-evidently undeniable songwriting than the combined potency of the entire package; her fine-spun lyrics, her accomplished pickin', her beguiling, terrifically limber voice (underplayed on the recorded versions, unfortunately though understandably), and probably most of all (if you're lucky/dutiful and go to see her), well, just her ineffable charm - maybe that's the folk part like i was saying, but also the part that transcends folk (qua genre): a great performer is a great performer.

just as devon's music certainly transcends folk - it's country, jazz (well, swing anyway), soul (er, soulful), bluesy-rootsy - poppy too, if you like - and all this with just herself and a guitar, though she's augmented on record. (it's a similar blend to ms. erin mckeown, another modern "folk" artist who's got something special going on.) but then folk by nature is mongrel anyway, or it oughtta be - even the kind of classicist formalism i was trying to get at earlier is something equally germane elsewhere (country, soul, pop); seems dangerous to yoke a genre to a particular songwriting mode (and what's labeled folk these days might just as well be called "acoustic/singer-songwriter," as much of it is, though those are terrible burdensome tags too.) anyway, just as easy as "it's all folk" why not say "none of it's folk." (i mean, my whole point was, maybe i'm not a folk fan, but this folker is too good to pass up.)

well. the devon sproule song that was my obsession for a good two weeks (and this entry has taken so long to write that even that's faded, though the song itself is untarnished) is "keep your silver shined," the title song from her new album, thankfully out and available recently though i heard her do it nearly two years ago when i first saw her, and it stuck with me all that time. you can hear it at herspace. again, no chorus (just the title phrase, soaring upward into wordlessness) - this time i think it's the harmony that really does it for me (how cute is she telling this kid the chords?), along with those little melodic lilts and of course the words - their sound ("a summer swam...a poughkeepsie scam") just as much as their meanings. it's got her cutesiest ("hands in our pockets and our pockets in our pants") and most poignant ("the best of us changed; the rest of us stuck behind") lines, and a wishful wish list it's hard to disagree with. essentially it's a catalog of and appreciation for life's little joys (from apple-picking to dresser drawers, two things i've almost, but not quite, achieved in the last week or so), a good thing for autumn if not quite autumnal. though in effect maybe it is. it's got that october feeling. indrawn communal contentment. glowy.

the "in the round" performance was a nice concept - done right, i think it would have created an especially conducive setting for a folk music interchange, one that allowed these four songwriters a chance to augment their music and performance by playing off one another. i'm not sure how that would work exactly - something like a jam session; a folk-song sing-a-long - inevitably something more fluid, less structured than you're probably gonna get in a contrived concert situation like that. what we got was a measly four songs from each performer - a tease, dev agrees, but also a neat forced encapsulation (should be easy to for each one to be memorable - devon did "silver," "plea," her quirky appalachian swing stomper "ol' virginia block," and a lovely compilation one-off called "julie") - and four roughly parallel but divergent visions of what folk might be. well ain't it all after all? sproule rhymes with soul rhymes with rock'n'roll. it's only acoustic singer/songwriter music, but i like it.