Chris Wood’s ‘None the wiser’ album review- Crushingly sober politico-personal reflections
I still don’t know how big the Agara lake is.
The lake- one of the more popular artificial lakes in Bangalore is a haven of sorts- not just for tired birds that find a perch on one of the many leafy branches of the trees that dot the area but also for the city’s human denizens weary with the city traffic and other dark shenanigans we put up with for the sake of living.
Though joggers abound the lake’s vicinity in the evenings, I found it a charming place for a walk. There is something about a slow stride down unbeaten paths when your eyes wander over the moss covered surface of green water speckled with white swans which is both earthy and dreamy at the same time.
And earthy and dreamy is a combination of feelings that is often associated with folk music. Even at its most political, the folk song structure retains a simplicity which we associate with a bygone era, which as well might exist only in dream land.
This is very much the case with the British singer, Chris Wood’s 2013 album ‘None the wiser’ which was my musical companion when I went for solitary walk at the lake last evening.
I had been to that lake many times before, and never have I bothered looking up the net to see how big it actually is. And prior to this, the last time I went there was more than an year ago- before the first lockdown from the virus.
Then, my younger brother had accompanied me on the walk, and we spent the bulk of the time making jokes amongst ourselves at the expense of the joggers. We are both overweight and had/still have more fat on our body than is healthy. And making fun of health-conscious people is our gig. Go figure.
The errant jollity of that walk was in stark contrast to the rather reflective mood of this walk- not least because I was alone, but also because of the songs that Woods was singing into my ears over my headphones.
I saw somewhere online the album termed as somber and a more apt description, I couldn’t think of.
Grim is the nature of politics and especially in the twenty first century, when we grapple with the very real existential threat of climate crisis, political apathy is often a portal to death.
Such thoughts are never far from your mind while you listen to Woods’ album even if the songs don’t necessarily directly deal with such concerns as climate change. Restrained anger seems to be the tone that Woods goes for in many a song, but there are tender moments of personal reflection which often finds him marrying lyrically the intimate with the political — the song, “With the sweetness game” being a prime example.
So affecting was the crushing sobriety of these songs that I abandoned my walk half way through and stepped out and away from the park around the lake and into the wild city traffic. I even forgot to hit the web and see how big the lake actually was- this time, I had thought I would do it.
For once, I found the cluttering, often haphazard movements of people on the streets something to escape to than from. Something to help you hide from the overbearing reality of our current socio-political times.
