- Audio CD (3 Nov 2008)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Thrill Jockey
- ASIN: B001GJ2ZNE
- Other Editions: Audio CD | Vinyl
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 367,269 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
Jubilee Offer: Patriotic Classics for £2.50 |
Product details |
Product Description
Review
It's been something of a purple patch when it comes to singer songwriters coming up with the goods. In a year that ushered in the transcendent meditation on loss and hope that was For Emma, Forever Ago by Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, we now have Micah Blue Smaldone - not a pseudonym but the real life moniker belonging to American ex-punk rocker turned philosophical troubadour.
Like Bon Iver's album, this too contains a sparse production, and tremulous introspective vocals. However, Justin Vernon's record was a response to self-imposed back-to-nature isolation. Smalldone's work springs from his travels and encounters around Eastern Europe.
At first glance you would be forgiven for thinking that this is an agreeably sedate album, essentially acoustic in nature, adorned with an occasionally jazzy inflection or a jangling folk-rock style that is sometimes reminiscent of the quaint fragility of P.G. Six's 2007 record, Slightly Sorry.
But beneath the veneer of dusty Americana there's a song-cycle carrying a heart-of-darkness travelogue filled with terse observations about the malevolent force within us all that slips off the leash with a depressing regularity.
Smaldone's words craft vivid images without any unnecessary histrionics or invective; paradoxically they're delivered with a deceptively restive grace that belies the undercurrent of lurking violence. The opening track, A Guest, pulses with an ominous dread as he painstakingly describes a nightmare meal with an unwanted guest, covered with the gore of something freshly slaughtered.
Similarly, the title song (imbued with a finger-picked motif suggestive of Planxty's elegiac West Coast Of Clare) resonates with an evocative symbolism. Detailing the corruption, excesses and guilt that scar both civilians and soldiers in times of conflict; the river is not red with something benign as the rays of a rising sun but with blood. Upon seeing a woman bathing in the maw, he asks why she chooses to swim in such a foul place, ''I cannot bathe in waters clear, until such is my conscience''.
Avoiding any crass preaching, Smaldone sings quietly of terrible things. Yet his absence of cynicism suggests these are ultimately songs about, and of, hope. --Sid Smith
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Micah Blue Smaldone is a former punk scenester from New England who has moved on to sparse, rootsy folk. 'The Red River', his fourth solo record, is dominated by meditative, neo-traditional acoustica with an eye for theatre. While intimate in scale it much less personal than, say, Bon Iver, but more focused on the kind of dust-choked cinematics of recent albums by the similarly named Micah P Hinson or Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, albeit with a less bawdy vocal style. Fans of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine's sparser material may find much to enjoy in the rusted, bleak atmospherics here. The Thrill Jockey press release tells me Smaldone sounds 'like a dead man', which may seem like hyperbole but there is something spectral about the old-time quality of the music. Like a less wildly impressionistic Grizzly Bear, there is a deliberately spooked mood to 'The Red River' - the sense that Smaldone is trying to conjure the ghosts of a past, not just resurrect the music itself. The production quality is as if it was processed through an analogue radio: the skeletal picked guitar, vagabond banjo and viola all sound somehow starched.
'Pale Light', the album highlight for me, with its muted horns and mood of dereliction, made me imagine a tramp listening to a Christmas brass band, trying to keep himself warm with a tot of whiskey: very much on the outside looking in. The beautiful, mournful trumpet solo suggests a less glossy version of Calexico's Dia De Los Muertos atmospherics. Elsewhere 'The Red River' is more conventional, pitting Smaldone's vulnerable Arthur Russell-esque vocals against picked acoustic folk and weeping cello. It's the kind of unhurried folk tinged with vaudeville and ragtime that would have never been picked up for international distribution 10 or 15 years ago but is enjoying something of a renaissance. In an era where we are not starved for these kinds of moods and textures, The Red River is hardly unmissable, but it is a sad, sometimes beautiful little album all the same.
First published at The Line of Best Fit
'Pale Light', the album highlight for me, with its muted horns and mood of dereliction, made me imagine a tramp listening to a Christmas brass band, trying to keep himself warm with a tot of whiskey: very much on the outside looking in. The beautiful, mournful trumpet solo suggests a less glossy version of Calexico's Dia De Los Muertos atmospherics. Elsewhere 'The Red River' is more conventional, pitting Smaldone's vulnerable Arthur Russell-esque vocals against picked acoustic folk and weeping cello. It's the kind of unhurried folk tinged with vaudeville and ragtime that would have never been picked up for international distribution 10 or 15 years ago but is enjoying something of a renaissance. In an era where we are not starved for these kinds of moods and textures, The Red River is hardly unmissable, but it is a sad, sometimes beautiful little album all the same.
First published at The Line of Best Fit
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
