Cerberus Vol.3(9)
It’s on, and then it’s gone…
Preamble
My hobbies are beginning to take me over. I find myself sitting in bed at night (before turning to a book to help me ease in whatever passes as a restful night for a restless sleeper) looking up new effect pedals, exploring potential new plant friends with which to populate our home, and thinking of the herbs I’m looking forward to growing in a well-lit corner of our kitchen.
All of these are being spurred on by what must be a fantastic 2021 in music as we near the end of Q1. Of course, there’s always great music floating about but I find myself continually knocked out by the next new thing every time I sit down to write this here message into the void, and it consumes my thoughts like the hobbies listed above. I can easily say there’s a couple of those jaw-dropping releases in the content below.
Reviews
New Bums — Last Time I Saw Grace
I feel like some of the best stories of my musical adjacency involve Ben Chasny. First off, he’s always been one of my favorite interviews (during those times I would collect my anxiety and throw it out the back window to be able to talk to people); the memory of him walking with shoulders forward through a crowd onto a stage and beginning to play a set without a second thought; long lost emails about favorite soul songs. Life moves on, and communication falters but Chasny’s work is always a rich source of inspiration and keeps me always returning to his canon.
But I must confess, Donovan Quinn was the harder musical vision for me to wrap my head around. His solo work left me wondering what I was missing, so when the first New Bums music came in the form of a 7-inch record eight years ago, I didn’t know what to think. The follow-up debut album, Voices in a Rented Room, made me reassess my own faulty judgment. I put back on the eponymous …And the 13th Month and Honky Tonk Medusa. I started to find what it was about Quinn’s voice that appealing, keen, and what was informing what it was about New Bums (as well as his work in Skygreen Leopards w/ Cerberus fav, Glenn Donaldson) that I was digging. I could begin to hear where Chasny and Quinn were mixing, bringing out the best pop-ish sensibilities in each other, to create a resounding document of immediate, warm music. Chasny was once again introducing me to a new musical adjacency, I just had to do the work. And Quinn was going to ensure I came along despite my worst inclinations.
Eight years on, Last Time I Saw Grace not only returns me to that mea culpa, it also presents a duo that I can no longer distinguish from each other. It goes beyond weaving into a singular voice, there’s a sort of cool that is transposed upon both of them from the awesome vibes and skills of the other. And the results remind me of the style a band like The Jesus and Mary Chain oozed in songs as simplistic but direct as “Dirty Water”.
Which is where opener “Billy, God Damn” transports me. I am inclined to remember where I was when I first experienced (and not just heard) Voices in a Rented Room. I start to hear how effortless Quinn and Chasny’s cool transports itself effortlessly into the music. The warmth of their collective magic also keeps me coming back to “Marlene Left California”. It — laying on the bed in the warm spring, windows open, smoke wafting in the air as everyone settles into being grateful to experience this moment together in a collective, contented sigh. Those moments don’t come often in a well-worn lifetime, but Last Time I Saw Grace — both by its title and metaphor — speaks to times you last saw someone that brought those graceful vibes back with just the right timbre as we all try to “catch up with our past”. It just happens that Chasny and Quinn do this with chords and voice. It’s the bearhug I’ve needed; Chasny, the easygoing relationship that I was lucky to fall in and out of, and Quinn the relationship we had to fight for because when it clicked, was going to be special.
Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi — Melodies in the Sand
A haunting album of classical inspiration, Melodies in the Sand is a constant wave of emotion crashing into the ragged shoreline. The cascading piano of “Růženka”, coupled with Irena’s careful vocals, slowly erodes the edges into a seamless transition into the beautiful blue of the raging sea. “Vanity of Wings” then takes flight, soaring over the new majesty the couple has created.
Both are classically trained musicians whose experimentation is turning composition into something that is inventive but also inviting. Melodies in the Sand has immediate, breathtaking impact despite how fragile each composition feels. It’s high and low tidal patterns both giving us a bashing against the rocks and wistful reprieves of gentle ripples. The result is an album that is as lapis and extravagant as it is unfettered and unyielding. Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi are the example to hold above the rushing waters when people speak of contemporary compositional force. Melodies in the Sand is much like its titular substance: flexible, granular, but when put together indifferent uses, strong and resistant.
Chakalito Jazz Experience— LEI
A tour de force in modern jazz fusion, LEI is a propeller that whisks you away into a world of both the past and the future. Fusion is often a yoke, hung around the head of unidentifiable jazz that shares instrumentation, phrasing, and ideas with “traditional” rock and roll, all while playing with the improvisational and free-spirited runs of jazz. All of that is found in Chakalito Jazz Experience’s document of their influences. It’s Miles running the voodoo down with a heavy dose of Mexicana. However, calling this a “Latin” album is selling the outfit’s repertoire very short.
There are modern sensibilities and productions at play throughout LEI that transforms it into a powerful statement of fusion’s re-emergence and reinvention. As the stilted organ of “La vida inicia en ese momento” begins to give out, the song taken over by a soaring, reverb-and-delay-drenched guitar that blasts off into the stratosphere with such violent speed. All that remains are vibrant contrails streaking toward the heavens.
But the album also embraces more traditional jazz ideas with modern trappings. “Polvo de estrellas del ayer (stardust)” is sung with Rat Pack vigor (in English as well), but the instrumentation borrows nothing from Big Band backing save for a few bombastic cymbal crashes for emphasis. Rather, it’s a bit more psychedelic and playful.
LEI is chalk full of jazz and rock in a melting pot of Mexican, African, American, and European stylings meeting on the mountaintop to remind us that “world” music may be the shittiest genre title to ever grace music, because all great music is well-traveled and riddled in rhythmic visas.
Hik/Iko/Mori — Hik/Iko/Mori
Small Steps Against Inertia/DL
A combustible EP of noisy emotion, the self-titled Hik/Iko/Mori is the sort of jumble I crave when the world sinks further into its worst inclinations. It’s the sound of the chaos, swirling around us while those of us left to pick up the pieces to come to an understanding are continually blocked from such progress. It’s hard to cut through the static to find that place. And that’s just my thoughts from the two minutes that are “Decay”.
Hik/Iko/Mori is under ten minutes but it’s enough time to provide a robust kick to the teeth to start each day learning to process the upcoming ills, and yet also a reminder to try to find those moments of solace among a world that hasn’t grown any crazier, it’s just now in your face 24 hours a day. The primal scream of “Slfless” is a spoonful of sugar to help the castor oil of a bitter planet go down.
M. Geddes Gengras — Echelons Beyond Reality
I’m not a praying person. What I believe is a mystery even to myself. I speak to the sky but don’t expect any beings to listen or respond. That does not frighten me. I don’t worry about a hell that, at least according to the Pontiffs of old, doesn’t exist. I see religion as a crutch, but informed faith as a source of rejuvenation. When I die, the memories of me from those who remain behind are all that will remain. I will become ash and spread across the dying planet as one more piece of litter.
It’s documents of these inner conflicts of faith and the non-existence of an afterlife that I find when I turn to uplifting, ever-expanding works of experimentalism. It can be books, photographs, paintings, sculptures…and of course, the almighty rhythms and messages of music. Gengras has always been one of my spiritual advisors. I may miss out on some of his musical pamphlets from time to time, but it’s not due to any sort of existential drift. It’s more that we are cherubs passing on clouds, and sometimes our rotations bring us back to each other. It came that his shadow cast itself over me with last year’s Time Makes Nothing Happen; both a musical statement and a rooted-in-reality sentiment. My third eye, fourth wall, and fifth dimension reopened to accept his message.
Gengras is no godly creature nor does he evangelize. He simply puts his being into his music, and it is up to me to decipher what I need from it. Echelons Beyond Reality, again as plantative and finite of a title as they come, sets me back on a course toward renewal. I see hate welling up in others, I see fear driving humans to horrible conclusions and habitual conspiracies, I see violence as the sole means by which some choose to communicate. These are spheres of disillusionment that I cannot and will not touch.
The gurgling reverberations of “River (mcs)” fire my neurons into action. “The World Tree” gets my pulse racing and sends adrenaline into my extremities. I take a deep breath and let Echelons Beyond Reality wash over me, taking me to a place of near-zen. This is the Newest Age, where enlightenment comes from consulting oneself from a place of peace. And Gengras delivers that peace in vibrating rhythms that flow with the serenity and guile of an unimpeded river. I see the wrongs of the world being cleansed and sense I am a being of change. Where the water moves unobstructed, I too must become water and not allow the hate, bile, anger, and violence of others to overcome me; I can overcome it and them. We must make this a better place and now I have the tome to keep me steady and forward-moving.
In time, Gengras’s influence will leave me again, to go off and help another see clearer. But he never truly leaves us. No great work of art or the artist abandons us in our time of need. They transcend, until they must descend back onto us, cradling us with the courage to do what must be done for the betterment of society and ourselves. It’s all inspiration, and how to interpret that inspiration lies upon you. For me, I want to go forth with the positivity of change. This world is broken and no unearthly being or holy ghost is going to fly down from their celestial perch to hand us an easy remedy. But art is most certainly a place to center oneself, experience what others are enduring, and to make the space for collective forces toward positive change. While Gengras may be creating music that is Echelons Beyond Reality, the truth is a better tomorrow — as far away as it seems — is not beyond our reach.
Parting Thoughts
Currently reading Decoding Despacito: An Oral History of Latin Music by Leila Cobo. Makes me want to read an oral history about “Rico Suave”. Not because I believe it is somehow omitted from Cobo’s brief but intriguing concept, but because Gerardo Mejía became a crucial A&R person who signed Enrique Iglesias (who is included in Cobo’s book) among other Latino acts (and more “traditional” American-based hip-hop and pop acts as well).
I know it’s chic to pick on Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, because his earnest interest in arena rock runs counter to his time in Nirvana. But I’ve found myself revisiting his debut self-titled album more and more as I’ve gotten older. It seems like both a bridge and a harbinger of things that came to pass. People, it’s really good. It’s still raw, but certainly leans toward his stadium rock stylings in some places. But Kurt Cobain was not wrong, “Alone + Easy Target” was and is (still) good. “Floaty” may not live up to the Lush inspiration Grohl claims, but it’s a fantastic song as well. The singles are still listenable. “Exhausted” is the best Foo Fighters song ever. I don’t believe in nostalgia as escapism, but I’ve found myself doing just that with Foo Fighters. And yes, I do find something charming about Dave always chasing that basement feeling of his youth, even if it turns into another arena rock overproduction: the canceled tour in a van or having Butch Vig move into your rich guy garage to make an album that sounds nothing like a 90s Butch Vig production.
