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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
I was a freshman in college before I realized I was from the South. There at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, I discovered an entire subculture of students who were fanatically into the "Old South." These Old South advocates exaggerated their accents. They talked like that cartoon plantation owner who was always yelling, "Belvedere, come heah boy!" They "fancied" things, were politically conservative, and generally acted like effeminate 60-year-old men. Interestingly, I never met any women in hoop skirts perpetually fainting from the vapors. This was strictly an "old boy" network. I must confess, the mystique eluded me. We were all from the South, so what was the big deal? Championing the South seemed about as pointless as sporting a "Don't Mess With Texas" bumper sticker. Nobody's messing with Texas anymore. Forget the Alamo. Who cares? Before college, the only other people in the South I'd met who even mentioned "The South" were rednecks – turkey-huntin', shotgun-totin', rebel-flag-brandishin' rednecks. The Mobile, Alabama, rednecks of my youth all got together after dark in the Winn Dixie parking lot and slowly drove their trucks around in a circle for hours. This particular form of vehicular mindlessness always struck me as borderline retarded, so much so that I could never take redneck culture seriously. (Just like I cannot take skateboarders seriously because they wear their pants like plumbers.) Now here at my college of choice were seemingly intelligent, well-bred students pining over our region just like those perpetually circling rednecks. Wazza? I escaped that college, but I could not escape the specter of the sappy South. As a middle school teacher, I would yearly take two of my best students to Birmingham for a Southern writer's conference. One year I asked a panel of writers, "When did you first realize you were Southern." One guy piped-up immediately in that pseudo-endearing, good-ol'-boy accent, "Well, I guess it was when mah grandma first served us cornbread and grits foh breakfast." That guy was a honking moron, and I made sure my students knew it. As a kid, he no more knew the South from breathing. Some post-adolescent visit outside of the South made homeboy panelist infatuated with the uniqueness of his "rearing," and he's been playing it up ever since. The real South is unaware of itself. It just "is." Like quantum physics, you can either know where the electrons are, or how fast they're moving, but never both at the same time. So too the South. You can either be Southern yourself or write about your idea of what "Southern" is, but never both at the same time. Modern country music smacks of the introspective, idealized South. Yes, authentic Southern music does exist, but rarely on Country Music Television. That is why Nashville is called "Nashvegas." Authentic Southern music is sung by old-time fiddle bands in the mountains of Appalachia. Church of Christ shape note singing, front porch Mississippi delta dobro blues, and two-step pentecostal revival worship are other legitimate forms of real Southern music. But by the time these genres reach the mainstream, they're usually diluted to the point of impotence. There is another kind of legitimate Southern music. It's music made by Southerners who are just trying to make good music – not good Southern music, just good music. It crops up in an Atlanta club or at an Athens frat party. It sounds vaguely Scotch/Irish, but not overtly so. It speaks of spurned love and unspannable distance. The occasional train is mentioned, but nobody cries in their beer, and nobody's grandma dies. It is not avante-garde, post-modern, or retro; neither is it cloggin' music. It's music that is deep and rich and sad, as life is deep and rich and sad. It is what it is, good Southern music. In the hands of a Yankee critic, it might be distractingly nostalgized. But I'll do mah level best to keep it real, y'all.
Edith Frost is from Texas. By way of New York City she landed in Chicago, where she recorded Calling Over Time. The album's cover shows a hazy view of what appears to be the Chicago skyline. If Chicago represents AnyBigLonelyCity USA, then Calling Over Time is about Chicago. The minimalistic arrangements, doubled vocals, and eerie organ work are all Chicagoan, thanks to the influence of the ever-present Jim O'Rourke. But most everything else about Calling Over Time is Southern. The basic acoustic guitar strummin', the heavy walking bass, the simple upright piano, the lack of drums, and the close harmonies all reek of country – not Garth Brooks country, but cattle-drive-campfire country. Calling Over Time has some blatant country ditties ("Pony Song," "Give Up Your Love," "Albany Blues"), and even some high and lonesome cowgirl blues ("Shadows"). Frost is lamest when she hams the accent and tries to pull off a Patsy Cline thing. She can't sing that well. Her voice is coolest when she just meanders along signifying melodies, which is what she mostly does. If Calling were just a collection of shoddily performed prarie songs, big yip. Fortunately, more than half of these songs transcend their genre to achieve massive apocalyptic greatness. Songs like "Follow," "Calling Over Time," and "Denied," in their bittersweet succinctness make Nine Inch Nails sound as blithe as the Cure. The mood of "Follow" is so spooky and ethereal, it stakes out its own subterranean emotional continent. "Engulf me lover/ And loop me into blue/ Enfold me lover." If songs are sponges that soak up memories (and they are), then "Calling Over Time" is the mother of all loofas. It has absorbed the last month of my life and shows no signs of saturation. "Now that you're in paradise/ Where you're bound to spend your life/ I'll be calling over time/ Though we may never unite." Whereas some country ballads are haunting, "Denied" is downright ghostly. Its breathy harmonies, lolling waltz bass line, and clashing organ overtones make it sound less like the soundtrack to Gunsmoke and more like the soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula. "I'd like to light/ Fires in the world/ Burn out the lights/ Burn out the foundries." Frost's worst lyrics are pretty bad: "oh baby when we go down to Albany/ oh the headaches'll be so amazing cause/ it's not easy to move your possessions/ to a place so far away from home." Ouch! But her best lyrics are cryptically evocative gems: "Loving hand turns burning sand to water." And Calling Over Time's profound moments outweigh its cheesy ones, making them bearable. Frost is at her best when she's nursing wounds of betrayal or pining into the void. Yeah, this is music to sing around the campfire...on some introspective porcupine drive through the parted waters of the River Styx.
And speaking of Hades, there's Cat Power's Moon Pix. Cat Power is singer/songwriter/guitarist Chan Marshall and whoever happens to be backing her in the studio at the time. At the time Moon Pix was recorded, she was in Australia, backed by a local alternative band. Marshall started off playing bars and clubs in Atlanta, then New York. Too punk to be folk, and too folk to be punk, she eventually fell in with a punk label and was championed by Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who plays on her two previous albums. The absence of Shelley's driving percussion on Moon Pix is its saving grace. Free to not be so stinking angsty all the time, Chan pioneers a genre best described as noodling garage folk. Marshall's tunes are simultaneously wispy and powerful. Her guitar fingerpicking is sloppy and cool. And her voice is just amazing. She could easily do the Patsy Cline thing, and thankfully, she doesn't. Most vocalists spend all their effort just staying on key. Forget vocal emotion, expression, richness, flavor – if they're on key then they sang good [sic]. Then there's Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, who couldn't carry a tune in a dime bag, but oh the vocal sincerity! Fortunately, Chan Marshall gives us both – all the quavering, stuttering, screeching endearment that you'd expect from Janis Joplin, all the beauty and strength you'd expect from Dolly Parton. And it's all wrapped up in this 20-something groover chick. Chan's voice is the perfect vehicle for these sad, emotional, beautiful, fragrant songs. Many a Gen-x slacker would love to write songs this good, if only they could. On the surface Marshall seems a lot like any other groover you might meet in the alternative music scene – wanting to be original, wanting to come across as expressive, deep, and talented. The difference is, she is original, expressive, deep, and talented. Chan's indie contemporaries probably wonder why she made it big and they didn't. Simply put, Chan Marshall is a subtle, honest lyricist, a crafty melody writer, a unique and expressive performer, and one of the coolest female vocalists since Joni Mitchell. Now go soak your head, wannabes. Moon Pix features two drum-driven pop tracks, "American Flag" and "Crossbone Style." The latter could be described as uncoordinated techno Ledbelly bluegrass, but I wouldn't describe it that way. Such divergent styles imply an awkward and visible fusion that doesn't really exist. Chan's songs are always just one style, not several. Her various influences fused well before this recording, and they emerge well-baked, not piecemeal. The rest of Moon Pix's songs are mostly just clean electric guitar picking and vocals. Marshall gets a lot of mileage and ambience out of her guitar, while still keeping her arrangements simple and thin. It's like zen fingerpicking, perfected by years of live solo performing. Although not as technically proficient a guitarist as Nick Drake, Marshall is in his moody league. Moon Pix owes an overt debt to Drake's similarly dark Pink Moon. Lyrically, none of Marshall's songs ties together as cohesive masterpieces, but there are several shining moments. Hell is frequently mentioned ("That place you know I'm not supposed to say"), and so we're back to the Southern themes of sadness, distance, and transparent loss. "Can you see? The moon is so hollow. What's the use, when I can see right through you?" "See you looking through me like you unzipped a zipper/ You hold the big picture so well/ Can't you see that I'm going to Hell?" "Slender fingers would hold me/ Slender limbs would hold me/ And you could say my name/ Like you knew my name." If none of these lyrics seem particularly profound now, they will when you hear them sung. Moon Pix's cover depicts Chan Marshall clad in a denim jacket standing amidst magnolia blossoms. Darkness enshrouds. The day this CD supplants Gone With the Wind as the #1 representation of the South to the rest of the world ... well, that'll be the day we gonna rise again.
Like this CD's title, which is meant to continually loop, Fables of the Reconstruction is one of REM's least understood CDs. Its cover reveals a drawn iridescent stage curtain behind which a pendulum swings. The pendulum is merely a rope tied to a crude wooden block. The wooden block is decorated on all sides with an embossed copper ear. It this a scene from the book of Revelation according to Bubba? Will this CD contain self-conscious folk art music. Will it contain art-pop vaudeville music? Yes. No. Neither. Both. Being from Athens, Georgia, and having achieved a modicum of popularity, REM finally go whole hog and make an overtly Southern album! Or do they? The band seems to be saying, "You want the sappy South? OK we'll perform your sappy South. We'll trot it out and make it stand on its hind legs. But the entire performance will be so disorienting that when it's over you won't know your sappy South from an Andalusian dog." Fables is blatantly cliche, replete with two train songs, two old codger songs, and every third song chocked full of glaring Southern lingo – "can't get there from here," "it's still a ways away," "call it what you may," "who are you going to call for," "he was reared to give respect," etc. Michael Stipe's voice is as drawly and twangy as it has ever been. Peter Buck's guitar is as chimey and jangly as it has ever been. Sounds like the sappy South to me. So what makes this CD real? Fables of the Reconstruction is real because it takes all this overt Southern pap, and re-imbues it with anarchic rock power. "Feeling Gravity's Pull" kicks the CD off with a Gang of Four style nihilistic dirge. It's the heaviest REM will sound until Monster, a full decade later. The song's sweeping orchestration and rock opera stylings form the ideal backdrop for Stipe's floating lyrics. Whereas Edith Frost and Chan Marshall lament distance, Michael Stipe warps it. "Peel back the mountains/ Peel back the sky/ Stomp gravity into the floor... Time and distance are out of place here." And so begins our deconstructed tour of the South we thought we knew. Yes, we've still got trains and fields and chicken wire, but all set to a locomotive sonic warp. "Driver 8," "Life and How to Live it," and "Auctioneer" rock. Like all REM songs, they still jangle and harmonize, but these songs are primarily built for speed. "Auctioneer" sports some major harmonic dissonance, and its beat is downright punk. "You want a scenic rural train ride? We'll give you a scenic rural train ride!" Apart from the rock songs, the rest of the songs are what you would expect from REM – charming tunes, innovative arrangements, and indecipherable lyrics. Piecing together the lyric fragments that do surface, the entire CD is about distance, disorientation, and loss. Fancy that. "Maybe he's following the legend/ Maybe he's following the moon/ Maybe he's maps and legends." "Driver 8, take a break/ We can reach our destination/ But it's still a ways away." "The dirt of seven continents going round and round." "Keep your hat on your head/ Home is a long way away." "I've been there. I know the way./ Can't get there from here." Even our two geezer protagonists can't find their way home. Wendell Gee dreams one night of a hollow tree, which he covers with chicken wire that morphs into lizard skin. Wendell climbs inside the tree, and dies in his sleep. Our second geezer protagonist, Old Man Kinsey, "wants to be a dog catcher/ First he's got to learn to stand/ He's gonna be a clown in a marching band." Sorry, but that's just weird. Fables of the Reconstruction is about returning to a home you thought you knew, only to discover that you can't actually get there, because the home you thought you knew doesn't really exist. It never did. It only existed in your nostalgia-permeated mind. Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction... Jorge Luis Borges should write the screenplay. These three CDs portray the contemporary South as accurately as any media you're likely to find. Ultimately, I can't tell you what the South is. That's why you have to listen. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Curt Cloninger believes that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and the Burger King Whopper with cheese (add bacon) is both. Visit Curt at lab404.com. |
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