Cerberus Vol.3(7)
When the cat’s away…
Preamble
I gave up a few bad habits near the end of last year just as a means of promoting better mental health. Unfortunately, it means I’ve now filled that space with a near-lust for certain guitar effects pedals as I begin to fiddle around more with my guitar (and other instrumentation) as a form of stress relief and enjoyment. No one told me how expensive this could get. To all those music makers out there always changing your rigs, set-ups, and sounds, I do hope we can inundate you with a livable wage and money to chase down your musical ideas in our slow crawl to something resembling a hopeful future.
Reviews
Andrew Weathers & Hayden Pedigo — Big Tex, Here We Come
I often find myself drawn to Weathers when he taps into the pastoral landscapes of his Californian past and Texan present. Two of the more wide-open states of America, there is a peaceful serenity to find when driving the highways and byways of these larger-than-life territories.
Big Tex, Here We Come finds Weathers back in this line of musical thinking along with a shotgun passenger, Hayden Pedigo. Yet these songs are not just two people pickin’ and grin’, nor are they just strait-laced sweeps of primo acoustical chords. Yes, Big Tex, Here We Come isn’t short on those but Pedigo and Weathers come from a place not too far removed from those post-Gastr solo works from O’Rourke and Grubbs; a place where modernity and rusticity collide into an unobstructed view. I know I can see for miles and miles whenever “Dry Country Ramble” washes over me.
Maybe it’s my youthful love of all things alt-country, but I find myself drawn to music that borrows from an idealized Americana that isn’t really American, but earthly. This was how I felt listening to Michael Grigoni’s Mount Carmel two years ago. A hopeless optimism of a world ready to untame me; to hold me in its rapture and welcome me to star stuff from which we all are made. It’s a wide-open sky and an uninterrupted stretch of road, with all the pit stops and tourist traps in between to stoke our curiosities.
Nadja — Seemannsgarn
The formative duo of Leah & Aidan is forever etched into my memory. I’ll keep chasing new Nadja releases after seeing them perform an in-store at a record store in Seattle that barely lasted a year. It was a spacious, open loft and worked as a counterbalance to the heavier vibes of their work. “Seemannsgarn Über Rummelsburg” — the sole composition on Seemannsgarn — reminds me of that experience. Nadja’s music is often collapsing in on itself, creating heavier textures until it becomes a metallic spiral of force that unleashes on its unsuspecting audience. Yet there is space between this blizzard of ambient doom to allow some room for growth and safe harbor. As it begins to climax, the funnel seems to be reaching toward the sky as if to pull down the moon and stars into its vortex rather than causing chaos among those watching its electrical storm raging on. While nothing will ever re-capture the awe of the first time I saw Leah and Aidan live, Seemannsgarn comes pretty damn close.
Clear Speech — Photograph on the Sidewalk at the Corner of Haight and Fillmore
The casual philosophy behind “Photograph on the Sidewalk at the Corner of Haight and Fillmore” feels all too familiar. A person reciting observations to no one and everyone; poignant insights mixed with milquetoast remembrances of the neighborhood they survey. The delicate ambience surrounds these moments like a glove because the narrator is either too fragile to withstand the blow of these soliloquies or too wounded to hold back the slings and arrows of an all-too encompassing world of solitude and hurt.
Clear Speech’s compositions are fantastically minimal and casually brilliant. There is nothing in the title track that is incendiary or revolutionary in the verses of its narrator, but that’s how strong its gravitational pull becomes. These are just the ramblings we deliver to an audience of atmospheric pressure in our own everyday lives. Though these free associations are not found on “Another Morning Outside”, the same longing is front-and-center in its elegant, lilting melody. Photograph on the Sidewalk at the Corner of Haight and Fillmore is a restorative experience, reminding us that someone somewhere is going through it just as much as we are.
Pablo Serr — Perbestial
This discovery is blowing my minds. Serr’s work is simplistic: a man, his acoustic guitar, and a raw voice. It’s all recorded very simply to a point of seeming rustic rather than lo-fi.
Yet it’s what is happening around Serr’s work that really makes the casualness of Perbestial melt. As Serr belts out his lyrics and pounds out a quaint melody on his acoustic guitar, the rest of “Las lágrimas nos mecen” begins to fall apart as random electronic chimes and warbled synth begin to pelt the song into a fractured chant of words and notes. The world is falling apart around Serr and yet he will not be deterred, even as the music he’s creating begins to crumble as well. The results are heartwarmingly enchanting. If this were any more high-tech, it would cease being real.
