#tom verlaine lyrics meanings

[lyrasky]

追悼Tom Verlaine【Kingdom Come】和訳トム・ヴァーレインの軌跡 Till Kingdom Come

追悼Tom Verlaine【Kingdom Come】和訳トム・ヴァーレインの軌跡 Till Kingdom Come Lyraのブログへ #tomverlaine #kingdomcome #television #tomverlainerip #トムヴァーレイン #newyorkpunk #punks #thomasmiller #MarqueeMoon #pattismith #b52s #richardhell #davidbowie #PaulVerlaine #neonboys #deedeeramone #RichardLloyd #cbgb #MaxsKansasCity

ニューヨークのパンク・ロック・シーンに最も大きな影響を与えたバンドTelevision。 このTelevision メンバーであり、ギター・インプロヴィゼーションを駆使したオリジナリティ溢れる音を出していたギタリストであり、クールな言葉を紡ぐイケオジ詩人(ただ単に気を軽くしたくて&Tomに再会したら言ってみたかったから…) であったTom Verlaineが昨日(日本時間だと先ほど)、2023年2月28日土曜日に天国に召された。享年73歳。 最近尊敬するアーティストの訃報が多くてかなりへヴィーな気持ちになる。偉人だって人間だから寿命はあるのは当たり前だと承知はしているのだが…やはりこの世を旅立たれてしまうのは辛い。 特に好きなアーティストや俳優etc…

[whisperthatruns]

An Aria

How do I get my mind back? Yes, my mind. The fascist, that murderer of half a million, never had my body. My body has been owned, but not by him. I never liked backtracking. Brush Road, Born Street. I’ve walked those roads before, barefoot. There is no going back to Born. No mind left behind to recoup. It’s like donated clothes you try to buy back from the sucker who’s already wearing them. But there is something to be claimed. Some comrade to bust out of jail who can’t see the way forward even when you crack the chains. In my pre-tit days, I’d walk to the empty outdoor theater and sit on the playground equipment beneath the screen. Everything in that place was silver. Gravel, playground horses, and rocket ships whose paint had chipped away by wind and time. I knew nothing larger than that screen. No god so sublime. Silver-white against the whiter clouds. Peppered with purple bird shit. When night falls, anything can project itself against a face like that. Cartoons, or Vixen, rated X. When the free-show man came to town, he’d hang a sheet between two trees and project cowboy movies against it. Kids sat on the grass eating popcorn from greasy paper bags, watching ads scroll down the screen. Popcorn wasn’t free. A free show is never really free. Do you think someone didn’t die on that sheet hung between two trees? I once received a letter from the current lover of the love of my life telling me he’d overdosed and died. She wrote on thin blue paper etched with flowers. An act of grace I hadn’t earned. I’d left him behind knowing it was just a matter of time. My mind has grown wooden around love, like a tree that has nearly swallowed a garden gate where lovers met at moonrise when the air was thick with Hesperis. A musty, fatal scent, like punks who refused to bathe. Lovers long dead, gate now opening only to the tree’s heartwood. My son’s first love was Anne Frank, after he read her diary. He was eight, drawing portraits of her day and night. I must have Anne, he said when I tucked him in, though he knew she was dead, whatever that means. This is the mind, sepia, color of dried blood. Maybe the first love is the best love. The first loss, the worst. If so, mine came early. The rest is repetition compulsion, iterations until the ink runs dry. Still, remembering wakes my mind a little, or some facsimile of the mind I used to be. All activities of the mind now seem quaint, like dolls with lace faces unearthed from beneath the attic stairway. My feelings, too, smothered like a kingdom of bees so the buzzing doesn’t draw attention to their honey. Now, to unmuffle myself, I read Keats’ love letters, written in a tubercular fever, then listen to Marquee Moon, album by Television, that Tom Verlaine band, so aggressive live it made me start my period, leave a lyric bloodstain on the chair. Then I play “Gimme Shelter” on repeat to be awash in the supremacy of Merry Clayton’s background vocals. Called into the studio in the middle of the night, cold, hair in curlers, pregnant, pushed out her scream- song aria three times, and miscarried a daughter the next day. She blamed it on the song but not her voice. When she woke after a car accident, years later, with amputated legs, she asked only about her voice. Mother, may I sing again? May I see again, not a symbol of a flower but Hesperis, tolls again in the wind again. Flower of an hour. A fragrant hour. Its face, skin, smile, its opening again, the curtain of petals closing over its face again. May I take the murdered world in? Sing of it again?

Diane Seuss (The Adroit Journal, 2024)

[mywifeleftme]

149: Tom Verlaine // Tom Verlaine

Tom Verlaine Tom Verlaine 1979, Elektra

We must consider the possibility that Tom Verlaine was a himbo. The kind of lanky, blue-eyed bone machine with lockpicker’s hands who makes a plain short-sleeved shirt look like runway apparel, and has the sort of innate social reserve that makes you blushingly work to fill in his silences—though the truth might be that most of the time there is nothing really going on behind his Mona Lisa smirk, only the faint urge to go back to fiddling with his guitar by himself. You can map anything onto a quiet man like that when he is beautiful, and when he plays his instrument like (to quote Verlaine’s one-time paramour Patti Smith) “a thousand bluebirds screaming.”

Much has been made of his nicking the stage name ‘Verlaine’ from the French poet, but by his own admission he just thought it sounded good! I mean, skim this 2000s-era interview about books from Dusted magazine; he clearly likes and is curious about art, and he’s admirably uninterested in impressing anyone (as established though, he wouldn’t need to!), but he doesn’t seem to think about any of it in a particularly analytical way. I mention all this because, due to its urbane effeteness, Verlaine’s output is always read as intellectual music, when there’s an equal possibility he was actually more of a sweet, slightly spectrumy goofball with intuitive cool. That’s not to privilege intellectualism over intuition; many of our greatest painters, composers, and even poets are hopeless at explaining the compulsions that shape their output, and a lot of the ones who can do the ‘splainy part well would be better off as critics.

At any rate, the trigger that set off this line of himbo inquiry/conspiracy theory was the duo of “Mr. Bingo” and “Yonki Time,” the songs that close the first side of Verlaine’s self-titled solo debut. They are simply put, two of the dumbest ass songs I have ever heard in my life. How to describe “Yonki Time?” A tuneless soundcheck goof replete with raspberries and fart noises that someone decided was funny enough to work into a full song, it’s the kind of musical non-sequitur that makes you wonder whether sequitur is Latin for “funny.” Lyrically, it’s full of jokes that probably made his friends shrug and say with an air of apology, “Well, Tom has a unique sense of humour.” The fact it wasn’t relegated to a B-side, its existence at all, really, forces a slight reappraisal of how much irony there was to songs like “Venus di Milo” and “Prove It”; how do they hit us if they were more goofily sincere than they seemed? To me, it lends them a certain charm, makes the otherwise inscrutably aloof Verlaine a little more human.

Tom Verlaine has taken me a while to get into compared to the first two Television records that preceded it. It’s not wildly different; Verlaine wasn’t anyone’s idea of a musical chameleon. He discovered his style as a vocalist, guitarist, and arranger almost immediately, and never meaningfully deviated from the trebly, drifting update on the Velvets established on Marquee Moon. Some of this is surely due to the absence of Television’s co-lead guitarist Richard Lloyd, whose comparatively rugged attack gave that band a more rocking vigour. Without him, Verlaine’s sound is dreamier, and it requires more attention to appreciate the brilliance of how he’s playing these diffuse pseudo-pop songs. Some songs, like the regal “Last Night,” clear out space for Verlaine to do his meditative guitar wizard thing, but often it’s the more propulsive songs like the jangly “Red Leaves” or the groovy “Souvenir from a Dream” that produce the real moments of wonder, when on a sixth or seventh listen you realize no one else on earth would’ve thought to put a song together in just this way.

There’s a story that David Bowie brought him into the studio during the Scary Monsters sessions to record some guitar parts, and Verlaine spent the entire allotted time trying out the many available amps without being able to settle on one and ended up leaving without having recorded anything usable. The Bowie connection was a huge opportunity for Verlaine, who had just recently begun his solo career. Television had been critically revered but had had little commercial impact, and Tom Verlaine wasn’t a brisk seller either—Bowie’s choice to cover the album’s “Kingdom Come” was a coup, but Verlaine was unwilling or unable to capitalize on the moment. His next LP, 1981’s Dreamtime wasn’t any more or less commercial than the albums that preceded it: it was another Tom Verlaine qua Tom Verlaine album, and if he couldn’t make any other kind of record, nobody else could make exactly his kind either. He was after all a uniquely beautiful man.

149/365

[our-daily-spin]

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

2020-01-06

So finally, I get to sit down, headphones on and listen to album on vinyl.  Boys are in bed, Jillian’s at gymnastics practice with Megan.  Bob had recommended a few Bowie albums, but unfortunately this was the only one I had on vinyl, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The experience of listening, with the liner notes, still, is much different.  Had I not, I wouldn’t have noticed that all were original Bowie songs except “Kingdom Come,” a cover of Tom Verlaine.  Possibly have blindly passed some of his solo albums, or from his time with Television. I might have also missed that Pete Townshend played guitar on “Because You’re Young.”

Not that any of that is integral to listening to music or finding meaning in the art.  To me, it’s those little details that take you from a casual listener level.  Creates new things to explore, listen for, artists to find.

“Ashes to Ashes” was an interesting song, maybe a decade later reflection on the story from “Space Oddity”?  

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky / We know Major Tom's a junkie / Strung out in heaven's high / Hitting an all-time low

Some web research showing the video was the most expensive produced at that time, and Bowie stating the song was an ode to childhood.

The song that struck me most on first listen was “Scream Like a Baby.”  The tension in the verse is so strong, the chorus almost resolves to a happier melody, but comes crashing down with the lyrics

Scream like a baby / Sam was a gun / And I never knew his last name / And we never had no fun

While I can hear the message of this song in the 80s being an anthem for anyone oppressed, it was hard for me not to hear this - after a year closed with more school shootings, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the re-imagined Joker movie - with Sam as a rejected outcast coming back for a violent revenge.

Mostly it’s these lines, between repeats of the chorus:

No athletic program, no discipline, no book / He just sat in the backseat swearing he'd seek revenge / But he jumped into the furnace singing old songs we loved

I do see this entire album, “Scary Monsters” as an exploration and critique of things on the outside.  I think it’s up to the listener to define what the circle is, and if they are singing as one on the inside slamming the opposing view, or one of the opposed looking for a voice.

[upalldown]

Black Midi - Schlagenheim

Debut full-length album from the experimental rock band produced by Dan Carey

8/13

Black MIDI: a large number of notes are layered in close proximity to one another, meaning that a traditional musical score appears almost completely black.

Not a genre as such, but a style of written music which, when played can be almost unlistenable; a black noise if you will.

Black Midi, the band, have been the hype band on the industries lips for the past 12 months. Spontaneous, elongated jams made up a lot of their gigs, no one set was the same as they would go off on tangents. They’ve managed to compress the songs into a concise LP, “Schlagenheim”.

Approaching this band on the back of a few singles and a lack of context was concerning. They sounded glitchy, pretentious and too clever for their own good as they search for a song amongst all that noise.

And yet, underneath that will to be clever and different there are songs, there are melodies. It’s not even that hard to find.

953 is a sledgehammer to your frontal cortex. It bludgeons immediately and you either let it happen or you might as well turn off now. Urgent frantic thrashing and angular riff melts away to a gentle verse before a heavy repetitive guitar hypnotises. A lighter Tool with the chaotic and frantic elements of Mars Volta and it head-butts your preconceptions into next week.

Speedway is a box full of frogs, a mash of discordant guitar and drums, some of the more calm and simple vocals on the record, it is naturally a single, a gateway song.

Reggae has this underlying satirical bent, that they might in fact be taking the piss out of the identikit sound that the genre so often pedals without anything different from track to dull track. Black Midi takes it’s innards and worked them back to front so the sound is just about recognisably reggae but there’s abrasive guitar and whirlwind drums and the tempo means you’d do yourself an injury skanking to it.

Performing production duties is Dan Carey, again. He can do little wrong. Every instrument is being played in the room next door, the drums in the hallway. The light and dark shade is pitched perfectly, as he also managed with Fontaines DC debut this year, and the tempo takes a welcome temporary dip.

A constant barrage of noise can grate, irritate and eventually overtake any enjoyment you had so the ability to allow the contours of a record to peak and trough is essential.

Western begins as a bastard son of a Gomez song, if it had run off with Talking Heads when you were a child. Geordie Greep’s vocals sitting somewhere between Peter Gabriel and alt-J’s Joe Newman. The coda sidles off into the sunset.

This and Of Schlagenheim are the centrepieces of the record. The sprawling jams reigned in for the LP that are still huge enough, still angular and unnerving enough to be fascinating. Even when they disappear down the rabbit hole they throw enough melody back out to make you follow.

Included in this kaleidoscopic record, first single, bmbmbm, in comparison is quite dull and unadventurous. Which may be missing the point; a one note, one chord loop as constant lyrics repeat, end word of every line “purpose”. Geordies vocals, whilst blend with the avant garde on display perfectly in most places seem to jar here, to the point of awkwardness, but just about surviving.

Years Ago is a little throw away because it is so short, especially in the context of the record but is intense and enthralling enough to captivate. Bass loop and Tom Verlaine guitars descend into caterwaul screams of pain.

Ducter is the finale required. It starts with an up-tempo hook which suddenly stops and transforms into a slow building quiet ascent, burning away until it explodes into a writhing beast that repeats for maximum impact before imploding in on itself.

And then there’s silence…..

At times you just like a record for an indescribable reason. Something just clicks, even when abrasive and harsh. Underpinning everything here is the thunderous and intricate drumming of Morgan Simpson. Stunning flourishes, scattergun beats and bizarre time signatures all from the diminutive sticksman.

Parts of Schlagenheim will connect immediately, but you have to give it time and spins for it all to fall into place. It’s not always a comfortable listen and it won’t be for everyone but it’s exciting to see where they’ll go next.

http://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2019/06/28/black-midi-schlagenheim-rough-trade/

[joshcroteau]

Felt - The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories (1984)

I’ve listened to all of the Felt songs available on various compilations on Spotify but didn’t think to try a full album of their’s until this week. This was a big mistake on my part. I had been missing out on Felt’s The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. I’ve listened to Strange five or six times: once in bed before falling asleep, the next day on the way to work, while at work and (after putting it onto a cassette) once while slowly driving down Newbury Street, late last night with my wife, looking at the window displays. Aside from not being much of a before-bed album, Strange can be played whenever.

Strange shimmers and shuffles along, broken up by an occasional, brief instrumental showcasing Maurice Deebank’s guitar virtuosity. Released by Cherry Red Records in 1984, this record brings to mind an ornate mish-mash of three personal favorites: Orange Juice, Vini Reilly/Durutti Column and Television. Lawrence’s vocals, faux-Tom Verlaine (Lawrence has been very open with his adoration for the New York City, post-punk Gods, even naming the band after a Television lyric) are almost monotonous when placed atop the jaunty melodies being expelled by the rest of the band, but never boring- they’re almost Felt’s trademark. Occasionally, Lawrence’s vocal melodies/patterns repeat throughout different songs and it is not so much distracting as it is familiar.

“Sempiternal Darkness”, the second song on the album, is an instrumental guitar piece that brought to mind the Captain Beefheart song “One Red Rose That I Mean” played solely by ex-Beefheart guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo. The comparison didn’t make much sense to me at first but I think it spurs from having the same “how the hell is this person doing this?” moment when listening to the guitar work by Zoot on Lick My Decals Off, Baby. “Sempiternal” means: eternal, unchanging, everlasting - a word I would not use to describe the guitar playing on Strange and certainly not on this song. The track is dizzying, mesmerizing, and gives you an up close look at the guitar parts that are weaving in and out of the more pop-oriented tracks on this album. There is no question that Deebank had classical training. Singer Lawrence was enamored by Deebank when he heard him play “Mr. Tambourine Man” at a young age and has said that he always encouraged Deebank to go wild on the Felt recordings. Sadly, the guitarist would leave the band following the recording of Felt’s next album Ignite the Seven Cannons.

Kaleidoscopic, wild, wave-watching “Imprint” paints a picture of birds lilting over and across one another. The tracks melodies weightless and beautiful. “Spanish House” and “Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow” both trod along cheerfully, direct and driving. On the latter, about a minute in, we hear a lead guitar part not unlike something Robert Smith might write (there is probably a better example that is escaping me) for “Friday I’m In Love”. These songs sound more in Lawrence’s wheelhouse than Deebanks. Short, precise pop songs.

“Vasco Da Gama” sounds like a possible cornerstone for some of today’s indie-leaning bands. Bands like Real Estate must have been influenced by Felt in some way or other. The opening guitar line for this track is so warm and round that it feels as if songwriting team Lawrence and Deebank purposely hide it from the listener, revealing it again only in the last verse of the song.

In “Dismantled King Is Off the Throne” Lawrence recycles a vocal part from another song, I don’t remember which. I think Lawrence’s vocals are “just enough”, regularly allowing the instrumentation to take the forefront of the songs, whether intentional or not. When I tire of following around the dizzying path of the guitar parts on this album, I think Lawrence’s lyrics may poke out a bit more. For now I’m having trouble focusing on them.

“Crystal Ball” opens with a Byrds-y bit. I had heard this song before and I think it is incredible. “Crystal Ball” is such a simply structured, pleasant song that could easily stand on it’s own acoustically, but when you move your attention strictly to Deebank’s guitar lead (and it is just one long lead, complete with little single string harmonic guitar flicks) you have a guitar pop masterpiece. The guitar work on “Crystal Ball” is outrageously tight and disciplined.

Strange’s final track “ Whirpool Vision of Shame” allows you to sit in a warm, low-tide wading pool before a bumping kick accompanied by flickering guitars enters, melancholily, followed with lyrics about falling rain and death. The band slows for a moment to catch their breath and then pop right back into place with a fluttering, scaled solo, reintroducing the verse portion of the song. The vocals ominous tone take hold over the second verse, giving the song a much more gloomy feel that stays until the close of the album.

I highly recommend Felt’s Strange Idols and Other Short Stories and look forward to listening to their many other albums; I should have thought to do so sooner.

Rating: 8.5/10

LISTEN:

Felt - The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories (1984) (full album)

[tsunamidreams]

Tom Verlaine is a guitar legend! Very underrated!

yeah, he is absolutely stunning. I don’t really care about guitars that much tho, what I like about tom besides from his odd guitar playing which is very beautiful, is his voice and his writing skills, his lyrics, his melodic work, really interesting musician. Being so singular as he is, Tom could have been so huge, but I guess he simply doesn’t care about that and now his songs which already sound like classics to me mean nothing to most peope hmmm. 

[bschliamusic]

REVIEW: Bradlee Z’s “2016 Hit Singles”

In 2007 J’ai Paul released and then deleted an album revered by fans and critics. His willingness to embrace anonymity over acclaim stood out and even helped bolster the infatuation of his followers. The less they knew or understood the more they obsessed over him.

Finding Bradlee Z buried in the local Bandcamp tags was a similar shock. Who was this guy? Where was he? How could be so heavily invested in producing content but without touching the scene? It was weird! Bradlee Z himself concedes: “I might be on the spectrum.” This song, whose themes thread through a collection self-mockingly titled “2016 Hit Singles,” lifted a tile.

When he finally agreed to meet it was no surprise to observe many charming eccentricities: a religious appreciation for Tape Op mag, genuine fears of hearing-loss, a wary apprehension to driving. His lyric sheet read like a thought pattern:

“if we puree our DNA we’re cherokee, we’re congolese we’re chestnut trees, we’re breathing bees we’re amputees on trapeze, fleas in tweezers squeezed and wheezing pleas in legalese”

That comes from “Shouldn’t It Feel Good,” a muddy slug-crawl of a song that whips you in the chorus and drowns you in the verse. Paired with the music video, which depicts a dizzying tribute to history versus memory, Bradlee Z reminds us we’re just reptiles that crawled out of the ocean, stood up and invented existential paranoia.

“I’m Turning into Tom Verlaine” makes a daydream sound like a nightmare with a wailing tantrum of a refrain. Mixed up with visions of a styrofoam hand being mutilated in a number of gruesome ways, you get the feeling that this is not a good thing.

The parable of the “Woodrat” implies the risks of self medication: when you start to feel better you might think, who needs it?

(The Woodrat) has a strong preference for shiny objects and will drop whatever it may be carrying in favor of a coin or a spoon.” – Wikipedia

So you flush the stash and as it’s spinning down the drain you think: wait, I’m unequipped to ignore life’s strangeness! Truthfully, this “Miracle Ghost Toast” was a tough one to interpret. But referencing the visual extension of the song was like reading footnotes for Ulysses, trying to understand seemed more important than succeeding.

“Tie-Dyes” comes off as a sentimental drunken sing along. And thank god, because things were pretty bleak for a minute there.

“i humbly submit, not everything is shit”

Even if this is just a passing moment of sublime for Bradlee Z, it gives the record depth and dynamic. Without the bitter, the sweet just ain’t as sweet.

“It’s Not What You Think This Time” serves as the melodic center piece of an album disguised as straight ahead indie folk but hiding a complex web of harmony. Listen for the slight modulation that shows near the halfway mark. Here, the lyrics bring the themes more clearly into focus: if there’s a perfect world, this one surely is not it.

“the earth was formed and cooled and warmed a whale, a snail, a unicorn, a writhing mass of human trash sprang up from the bowels of some hell i commend you for trying lay your flag down by your side ’cause it’s not what you think this time in a perfect world your pretty sister runs a spirited campaign to clear the family name”

It’s hard to take “I Ain’tcha Sousaphone” apart because it’s such a great fucking song. The production is quirky but the execution is easy to follow. With unshakeable rhythmic hooks, Bradlee Z’s rejects his usual pop-mocking and finally feels at home crooning the kind of sweet melody that stays with you all day. The lyrics hide a darker meaning by only glancing at the internal forces that seem to be using him as an instrument. Although he resists, it may have “won this time around.” That acceptance is the magic, the source of this music’s density. Bradlee Z cannot control the forces that account for his work.

“On the Spectrum” is a song that spells out the trail I’ve followed ‘til now. It’s like when your senile grandmother has a lucid moment and remembers where she put that 10k bond.

“i tell my friends i think i’m probably on the spectrum high-functioning but spaced-out missing a connection, dreadfully reflecting”

It’s the perfect closer but instead, “Dead Broke Black Hole” finishes the race.

“2016 Hit Singles,” as the title alludes to, was not released as a whole. These songs were added to the album as they were finished throughout the year and perhaps that’s why “DBBH” feels out of place. Sure, it shares much of the production value as the rest of the record but it feels like the first song on the next album. If anything, this small misstep proves Bradlee Z is, in fact, human.

Many great artists come to be great not only by their raw talent, but by commanding a sense of their identity. What’s not to be envied about being something and also being good at it? Bradlee Z is an enigma which, by its nature, captivates.

The thing is, unlike so many other artists, he doesn’t need the spectator.

You sit at your desk and imagine 100 million bedrooms with reclusive madmen making terabytes of music and refusing to show it to anyone or, at the very least, refusing to market themselves along with it.

You have to find them.

[lookingforthemagic]

Felt - The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories (1984)

I’ve listened to all of the Felt songs available on various compilations on Spotify but didn’t think to try a full album of their’s until this week. This was a big mistake on my part. I had been missing out on Felt’s The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. I’ve listened to Strange five or six times: once in bed before falling asleep, the next day on the way to work, while at work and (after putting it onto a cassette) once while slowly driving down Newbury Street, late last night with my wife, looking at the window displays. Aside from not being much of a before-bed album, Strange can be played whenever. 

Strange shimmers and shuffles along, broken up by an occasional, brief instrumental showcasing Maurice Deebank’s guitar virtuosity. Released by Cherry Red Records in 1984, this record brings to mind an ornate mish-mash of three personal favorites: Orange Juice, Vini Reilly/Durutti Column and Television. Lawrence’s vocals, faux-Tom Verlaine (Lawrence has been very open with his adoration for the New York City, post-punk Gods, even naming the band after a Television lyric) are almost monotonous when placed atop the jaunty melodies being expelled by the rest of the band, but never boring- they’re almost Felt’s trademark. Occasionally, Lawrence’s vocal melodies/patterns repeat throughout different songs and it is not so much distracting as it is familiar. 

“Sempiternal Darkness”, the second song on the album, is an instrumental guitar piece that brought to mind the Captain Beefheart song “One Red Rose That I Mean” played solely by ex-Beefheart guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo. The comparison didn’t make much sense to me at first but I think it spurs from having the same “how the hell is this person doing this?” moment when listening to the guitar work by Zoot on Lick My Decals Off, Baby. “Sempiternal” means: eternal, unchanging, everlasting - a word I would not use to describe the guitar playing on Strange and certainly not on this song. The track is dizzying, mesmerizing, and gives you an up close look at the guitar parts that are weaving in and out of the more pop-oriented tracks on this album. There is no question that Deebank had classical training. Singer Lawrence was enamored by Deebank when he heard him play “Mr. Tambourine Man” at a young age and has said that he always encouraged Deebank to go wild on the Felt recordings. Sadly, the guitarist would leave the band following the recording of Felt’s next album Ignite the Seven Cannons.

Kaleidoscopic, wild, wave-watching “Imprint” paints a picture of birds lilting over and across one another. The tracks melodies weightless and beautiful. “Spanish House” and “Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow” both trod along cheerfully, direct and driving. On the latter, about a minute in, we hear a lead guitar part not unlike something Robert Smith might write (there is probably a better example that is escaping me) for “Friday I’m In Love”. These songs sound more in Lawrence’s wheelhouse than Deebanks. Short, precise pop songs. 

“Vasco Da Gama” sounds like a possible cornerstone for some of today’s indie-leaning bands. Bands like Real Estate must have been influenced by Felt in some way or other. The opening guitar line for this track is so warm and round that it feels as if songwriting team Lawrence and Deebank purposely hide it from the listener, revealing it again only in the last verse of the song. 

In “Dismantled King Is Off the Throne” Lawrence recycles a vocal part from another song, I don’t remember which. I think Lawrence’s vocals are “just enough”, regularly allowing the instrumentation to take the forefront of the songs, whether intentional or not. When I tire of following around the dizzying path of the guitar parts on this album, I think Lawrence’s lyrics may poke out a bit more. For now I’m having trouble focusing on them.

"Crystal Ball” opens with a Byrds-y bit. I had heard this song before and I think it is incredible. “Crystal Ball” is such a simply structured, pleasant song that could easily stand on it’s own acoustically, but when you move your attention strictly to Deebank’s guitar lead (and it is just one long lead, complete with little single string harmonic guitar flicks) you have a guitar pop masterpiece. The guitar work on “Crystal Ball” is outrageously tight and disciplined.

Strange’s final track “ Whirpool Vision of Shame” allows you to sit in a warm, low-tide wading pool before a bumping kick accompanied by flickering guitars enters, melancholily, followed with lyrics about falling rain and death. The band slows for a moment to catch their breath and then pop right back into place with a fluttering, scaled solo, reintroducing the verse portion of the song. The vocals ominous tone take hold over the second verse, giving the song a much more gloomy feel that stays until the close of the album.

I highly recommend Felt’s Strange Idols and Other Short Stories and look forward to listening to their many other albums; I should have thought to do so sooner.

Rating: 8.5/10

[ricardosousalemos]

Stef Chura: Messes

Detroit indie rocker Stef Chura has the kind of magnetic voice that music writers fall into ditches attempting to describe. Froggy, trembling, and full of unexpected catches, it sits in the forefront of her debut album Messes, and she often uses her finger-picked guitars behind it to trace and echo her vocal melody, framing for maximum scrutiny. She seems confident with her instrument and to grasp how it works, the same way a good character actor knows how to use their pointy chin, their waggling nose, or their thick eyebrows. Breath to breath, note to note, she  evokes different singers: On “Faded Heart” she sounds like Stevie Nicks impersonating Dan Bejar. On “Slow Motion,” she recalls Television’s Tom Verlaine, while on “You” she channels the velvety longeurs of Chrissie Hynde. 

Nevertheless, she retains complete control of this unruly, coltish instrument, even as it tramples over small stuff like enunciation and diction. On paper, her lyrics are poetic and sharply rendered (“Thin like the skin on a lottery ticket”) but the journey from the page through her larynx is a rough one, and a line as simple as “You can do that” (the hollered chorus from “Spotted Gold”) can turn into an eleven-syllable phonetic rollercoaster with no discernible entry or exit point. The lyrics suggest the album’s title refers to the sorts of messes we make of each other (“Putting in overtime/To get my revenge on you/I can see in your eyes/There’s nothing left to lose”) while her voice itself shows what can happen when a perfectly clear-seeming thought gets garbled by its expression. It’s a metaphor for the gulf separating what we mean to say and what others hear, maybe. 

Or maybe just an odd voice. In any case, Messes is alluring largely because of it, and the band surrounding her reinforces that allure. They play a simple style—roughshod, lowlit indie rock, with guitars and voice all flickering around the same burnished midrange—with quiet style and intuitive command. The music mostly stays at a mid-tempo simmer, only boiling over for a few moments of yelped catharsis, the guitars squealing as if kicked. The drumming has just the right hairs’-breadth hesitation holding back the downbeat, keeping the music loose and full of air. The album falls just right, like a stretched-out sweater with holes in the collar. 

Messes, true to its title, feels inchoate, a few sloppy first strokes down on a big white page that catches the eye. It would be nice if she wrote some sharper songs; while her delicate and echoey fingerpicking tangles sound nice, she maybe gets a little too lost in them. A couple drowsier songs stretch out so languorously they start to lose shape—“Human Being,” a pleasant tangle of fingerpicking and Chura’s moan, is more mood than song. But it's a rich mood, sumptuous enough that the blurry contours don't matter much. It’s easy to indulge a reverie when it’s a vivid one, and Messes invites you to lose track of time for awhile with it.