#yet he and kirk understand each other in such deep implicit ways

[brilliantorinsane]

Spock: Has it occurred to you there's a certain ... inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you've already made up your mind about?

Kirk: It gives me emotional security. *soft smile*

Spock: *tiny, thoughtful smile*

Kirk: *warm gaze intensifies*

They are so ,

[jefferyryanlong]

Fresh Listen - Kalapana, Kalapana II (Kalapana Music, 1976)

(Some pieces of recorded music operate more like organisms than records. They live, they breathe, they reproduce. Fresh Listen is a periodic review of recently and not-so-recently released albums that crawl among us like radioactive spiders, gifting us with superpowers from their stingers.)

A few lovingly employed jazz chords elevated the material on Kalapanaʻs 1975 self-titled debut album from standard Seventies singer-songwriter fare. Already young masters of dramatic ballads, acoustic soft-rock, and a Hall and Oates cover that whipped the lackadaisical original to a harder, steadier groove, the clarity of the the bandʻs sonic expression was equally appropriate in the protective womb of noise-canceling headphones, the breezy, smokey outdoor arena, and the humid disco of nylon and polyester sweat. 

After several listens to that first record, it becomes clear that the creative restlessness of the bandʻs principal songwriters, Mackey Feary and Malani Bilyeu, promise something greater to come, something more colorful than their punctiliously strummed guitars and easy, blended harmonies. An expansion of the template of their sound, manifested by a band whose technical proficiency is and was arguably unparalleled in the past and present music scene of Hawaiʻi.

Musically, lyrically, thematically--in totality--Kalapanaʻs second album, Kalapana II, is the band unleashed. Feary and Bilyeu, along with DJ Pratt, Kirk Thompson, and auxiliary member Michael Paulo (indelible, exuberant saxophone and wistful, impassioned woodwinds) must have been inspired by the same musical spirit, a living energy summoned into contemporaneous song-time by each musicianʻs set of particular gifts, a common drive toward melodic and rhythmic precision, the generosity and camaraderie obvious in the bandʻs collective playing, and that place that gave birth to the band--east Oahu specifically, with its mountains and beaches, but also with its nightclubs and urban problems. Kalapana II is a document of a band in sync, its purpose unspoken except as presented in a set of songs deliberately inscribed on two sides of black plastic.

Unlike most of the bandʻs peers of the time (with the exception of Cecilio and Kapono), Kalapanaʻs connection to and evocation of Hawaiʻi as musical idea is primarily implicit. Aside from “Kona Daze,” a track from Kalapana, the are no songs from the bandʻs first two records that address Hawaiian place or culture. The bandʻs name, according to legend, was decided upon Grateful Dead-style, by simply pointing out a random spot on a map, not out of any significance of that town on the Big Island to its members. Why Kalapana avoided direct references to Hawaiʻi might be an attempt at Seventies-era universality, or because its songwriters were simply very young townies. Nevertheless, Hawaiʻi as a feeling emanates through every note and beat on Kalapana II, from Bilyeuʻs “(For You) Iʻd Chase a Rainbow” to Thompsonʻs “Black Sand” to Fearyʻs “Juliette,” which evokes a night-time glide by canoe, facing the shore, a mountain-side aglow with moonlight. 

The album opens as warmly as the transition out of a hot noon sun into the cool shade of a Waikiki parking structure. In “Love ʻEm,” inexplicably listed as an explicit track on Apple Music, the generally heartbroken Feary looks away from his own pain to espouse love as a choice, a more difficult but ultimately more rewarding process when applying it to those who fear you, despise you, or generally donʻt deserve it. Doing the work to move past mistrust and pain to embrace what is different, what is strange, is what, as Feary sings, “the one thing that will save us from destruction.” If anything, taking simple steps to conciliation with others or reconciliation with the self will “make this place less a Hell.”

“Freedom,” a kind of mega-collaboration between Bilyeu, Feary, and the jazz-oriented Thompson, illustrates the virtuosic ability each of the band members attained after their first record, especially of Bilyeu (on guitar) and Feary (on bass). Only saxophonist Paulo can match the ferocity of Bilyeuʻs dirty yet articulate solo. The call and response vocals of the two songwriters compete with a joyful intensity.

Along with innovation in Kalapana II, there are also examples of Bilyeu and Feary tapping into the musical personae theyʻd established on their first record. Bilyeuʻs “(For You) Iʻd Chase a Rainbow,” in spirit and execution, is the sequel to his earlier “Naturally,” while Fearyʻs “Moon and Stars,” with its celestial intermediaries for unrequited passion, is a more melodically powerful extension of “Nightbird” (in which a feathered buddy served as middleman between lovelorn Feary and the object of his affections). Of the later songs, “Moon and Stars,” Love Boat-inspired intro and all, resounds more effectively, though both singers have a tendency to push their voices toward a tone of abject desperation that comes across as pitiable.

For all its talents, Kalapana wasnʻt geared to finding liberation in the prescribed structure of the blues, which is why Feary eventually tears into “Way That I Want It to Be” as a simmering, dramatic soul ballad, after toying around with a smokey, piano-driven twelve-bar. “Play It, Sing It” likewise pulls a thankful bait-and-switch, beginning as a down-home, fiddle-rocking country number before being quickly usurped into the bandʻs pre-established groove of harmonious Hawaiian soul.

Excluding the jazz-rock classic “Black Sand”--Thompsonʻs immortal contribution Kalapanaʻs legacy and to local Hawaiʻi music--the two masterpieces on Kalapana II are the quietest on the album. “Dorothy Louise,” with its gentle, “Balckbird”-style percussion evolving into a cleverly programmed backwards hi-hat, transcends even “Helpless”-era Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in terms of hard-learned desolation. Bilyeu does press his point a little forcefully when he takes the bridge alone, adding theatrics to what has, without the vocal, been a pure expression of sadness. But the song is strong enough to bear Bilyeuʻs self-inflicted drama, floating and sinking like the realization of a drowning man who accepts that he will not be saved. 

Tragically, even in his early Twenties, an on-top-of-the-world Feary had already struggled with the dark understanding that he might not be saved. Maybe the most eloquent distillation of clinical depression, “Lost Again” strikes so deeply because of its casual understatement. The singer can’t name the feeling that buries him so deep, only the slim possibility that something might help him forget the hollow always floating around him, threatening to subsume his better self and his music. 

Feary left the band after Kalapana II, never releasing another record with them, though occasionally reuniting with Bilyeu and others for live appearances. After drug problems, jail time, and suicide attempts, Feary hung himself with his bedsheets in a cell in 1999. Bilyeu continued with more lukewarm versions of the band until his death in 2018. Though Feary and Bilyeu’s Kalapana released a minimal amount of material in their brief time together, the fusion of their talents resulted in an explosion and residual radioactivity with a forever half-life, a music to impress upon the imagination some more perfect vision of time and place that remains, like the greatest of ideals, just out of reach.