Souverian - Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird is a purveyor of puns and wordplays that flow like the violin he always has with him that may well have become a detachable appendage from the trachea - it's that natural to him.

On this masterpiece called 'Souverian' Bird has created something that summons rest.  Whenever I felt too tired to go on this past year, I would lay down and listen to this song, and it was rejuvenating, it feels so natural, so comforting.  He plays on the French word 'Souverain' which in English is 'Sovereign' perhaps referencing a monarch, or someone with sovereign authority.  It feels like a medieval lullaby in some ways, in that it evokes imagery of a former time, a time of oppression and pain, where power is centralized and hope is decentralized.

The song tells of a fire one that burns the countryside
               
               Though bells will ring church steeples catchin' fire . . . 'Cause in the Spring tender grasses won't burn easily . . . Wild parsnips they still scald my lungs . . . While thistles will burn my feet . . .

In the midst of this fire, whether proverbial or not, waits a man for his lover, a lover who will not come.   It seems that amidst the spring, the time of growth and rebirth, the time where birds let out all the breath they had stored up from winter, his lover won't return, but he still sings.  He sings in the second person and addresses her, because if the birds' songs were futile in summoning her, perhaps his personal appeal would reach her ears on the backs of the wind-waves and heartaches.  Perhaps it would be enough to compel her to return.

He sings his tune, his tune that acknowledges their youth, their time ahead, time that is hoped to be spent with each other.

About four minutes in, the song builds up together with the violin and the acoustic guitar and it culminates to a point
                     . . . then silence . . .
                then a soft descent sliding down the violin, and landing upon the tempered drum.  And Bird's voice flows in with the words

                      Under the elders, the older get younger,
                      The younger get older, over the elders,
                      And under the elders, pretend that you're older now

I'm not going to pretend like I know what this means, because I don't, but I believe it is rooted in the family tree, a tree whose branches extend far beyond what we can imagine, and we feel this day the effects of our ancestor's decisions, their residual personalities have been incorporated into us, without us even knowing them, like the leaves who have never known their roots, but are still sustained by them all the same.

A motif in Andrew Bird's songs is the concept of the 'fatal shore'.  He posits it in the line:

                     And if you join the chorus you will never fear anymore
                     So here comes the chorus, we will meet on a fatal shore

What a beautiful line.  What a beautiful concept.
The fatal shore.
It reminds me of the line in Modest Mouse's 'Ocean Breathes Salty' where he says 'You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye' - I imagine that that meeting and departure would take place on this fatal shore, on this shore where all things come to an end - things like fear.

With this song, Andrew Bird created something truly surpassing, something that encapsulates the essence of what art is supposed to do, because I believe art is supposed to do something, whether that is to move, stay, inspire, compel, exist, work, question, think, or in this case all of the behind, while also beckoning rest, beckoning rest via violin, whistle, and vocals.  Well done Mr. Bird.

Forks and Knives (La Fete) - Beirut

Anytime a piece of writing can transport you to another time and place it's worth considering, and when that time and place is golden France of an age ago, that piece of writing is special indeed.  

Zach Condon is the frontman of the eccentric band Beirut.  Condon is young and his youth shows through much of his music, but it is a youth that has heritage, much like Joe Pug's, but less American, trading an acoustic guitar for a mandolin and accordion.  Beirut is a band that feels much more communal than a lot of folk, it has its roots in Balkan folk and their songs usually require a plethora of instruments - accordions, mandolins, ukeleles, violins, drums, tamborines - along with some voices to back Condon.  'Forks and Knives' feels much like this, like it's a song sung round the table after a dinner party in a French cottage.  

The song starts with these waltz-like violins that level out and mingle with the accordion as Condon flows along singing of people's spirits as they seem able to turn the weather warm and light like the ebb and flow of a tame river.  This yields a chorus of merry song accompanied by a steady cymbal and snare and the melodic accordion, violin, and mandolin playing throughout.

The middle stanza intercedes and Condon keeps his word-waltz stepping as he talks of sad words from wise birds, words that may keep the organic street afloat as they break into another orchestral round.  The horns come in, as is Beirut's way, and synchronize the accompanying instruments around it, and perhaps relay the message of the wise old bird with his sad words, although, it may be the bird itself speaking.  

The horns yield to the accordions providing the background for Condon's last stanza of the tale, as he talks of "He" who could be that old bird, or could be a new old man, either way he speaks of the things that make his life worth living - his stories of superb wine, rich memories, and a melancholy hospital bed.  I picture this as a man who gave the hitchhiking Condon a ride in the French countryside in this fictional memoir, a man who sat him down and fed him hearty food and wealthy wine and told him rich tales of old - of heroism and romance, breaking his heart and summoning laughter with each alternating weave.  

About the hospital bed - I picture him talking of the loss of loved ones, like he was a man with a loving large family that he lost one by one, that he had to endure death with over and over in that hospital bed and maybe he experienced bad health himself, recovering then reverting then recovering all the while his life ebbs and flows like a river with the hospital bed as its eddy.  This is a man that has experienced much and probably speaks regularly with that sad old bird, they speak the same language, though the well-meaning old man has a more optimistic dialect that seems to confuse the bird.

Conjecturing aside, this song is pure listening pleasure, if the taste of honey had a musical parallel it would undoubtedly be this sweet song.

Take away show courtesy of Vincent Moon and La Blogotheque:

http://www.blogotheque.net/serie/concert-a-emporter/

Hymn 101 - Joe Pug

Joe Pug is the real deal.  I believe he is.  I believe he is one of those chosen storytellers, the ones who have the power to change a generation, because they're so full of words that it just takes one - one album, one song, one word that can ignite a people, ignite them like a flare in the thick of a dry forest of brush that is the youth, the youth that is starved for honesty, starved for stories, starved for something that they can hold on to, starved for something to coalesce their attention, something that has substance.

'Hymn 101' is that flare.  It works like a flare, starts from a low place, a base, a place of identification, a place that everyone knows, an open road if you will.  And it rises.  Oh, does it rise.  The strum is steady like a rickshaw, but the lyrics progress, unfold.

What makes Pug resonate is because he realizes, he isn't one of a kind, he doesn't see himself as an ace of spades, he's not going to change the face of music.  He realizes that it is his time, his time in a long list of times, a heritage of musicians, but more a heritage of folk folk - the storytellers who don't write anything down but have keen memories and oral tradition.  Yet he will make his time last, because what he says in his time has staying power.

He says:

'I've come to reach out blind,
To reach forward and behind,
For the more I seek the more I'm sought'

It's painful how much we fail to remember that to reach forward, you must always reach behind.  History repeats itself.  It is cyclical, it's predictable in many ways, for better or for worse or for both.  This is how Pug's music is.  His words are original, but they exist in a community of influence, throw a dart between Dylan and Twain and Moses and you can find similarities, spheres of influence that overlap on a grid at points A-Z to the nth power, and each of those intersections is a point in time of a storyteller, and that point in time is their time.  Right now is Joe Pug's time and he knows it.

The song is strewn with the narrator's voice of explanation, his voice that gives reasons for his arrival and for his journey.  The line that stands out to me is:
'I've come to test the timber of my heart'
That is what this song comes down to, that could be what it means, it means that he's got something inside of him, and it's either rotting or it's growing and he means to found out which.  Perhaps the former led to the latter, which spurred his feet on this journey, this spiritual journey of foundation, of seeking.

And it all comes down to the end, a fitting end.

And you've come to know me stubborn as a butcher,
And you've come to know me thankless as a guest,
But will you recognize my face,
When God's awful grace,
Strips me of my jacket and my vest,
And reveals all the treasure in my chest?

He comes to the end of the road, perhaps a changed man.  Perhaps the road has shaped his rotten wooden heart and has rooted itself in substance, in good earth, so that now it means to grow, to produce.  Perhaps he is almost unrecognizable now, because how can there possibly be a recognition between shadow and light?  How can the night ever linger long enough to see the dawn?

And yes there God waits at the end, with his revealing awful grace.  His painful grace, his awestruck eyes-wide grace, his reverential penitent grace that strips away everything and shows the essence of a person, an essence that appears to be filthy - jacket and vest covered in dirt-muck and sweat-spit, but when stripped away, it shows to be concealing something much more beautiful, something much more vibrant - you.  And man, is that worth singing about.