Catch-Up Time: 4 Excellent Albums I Missed
2 lesbian country should-be-superstars, a latin ambient visionary, and Saturday's Child being brought back to life.
Brandy Clark - Your Life Is a Record
A lovely promise. Idealizing the minutiae and the small details, believing it all adds to a cohesive whole, and that maybe, when put together, something beautiful can come out of pain and heartbreak. The idea that everything will make sense at some point. Your Life Is a Record. It’s a hard task, the one that opener “I’ll Be the Sad Song” must do: it needs to both present that concept, that idea, and also place the listener on where the narrator is, where they fit within that spin. Brandy Clark, getting out of a 15-year old relationship, realizes she’s not gonna get the place she wants out in her former partner’s life, and the song indeed sounds like a ship sailing away in the middle of the night, while the lighthouse gets more distant in the middle of the fog. The composition remains gentle, for she needs that gentleness too. As she realizes that, she begins to try to come to comprehend that leaving, how much it’ll affect both of them. “Couldn’t be your happy song, but at least we had a song” - that’s a beautiful sentiment, one of understanding and reckoning. Meanwhile, the main fiddle and strings accompany her into what’s sure to be a messy yet rewarding song.
It’s a powerful opener, and one that only somewhat predicts where the album’s going from then on. Brandy Clark has always been wistful yet witty as a songwriter, and even in times of turmoil and reconstruction, she keeps some form of decorum in her established kind of songwriting. Even in the middle of a clear breakup album, she’s able to include the slow-burning, orange-tainted slow dance “Love Is a Fire”, as she and her thoughtful producer Jay Joyce create an atmosphere of trying something new in the middle of an empty bar, and Brandy’s sultry yet burned delivery always implies a more dangerous kind of passion, instead of directly projecting it. Then again, there are moments where she cracks. “Long Walk” sees her in a specific moment where she’s not willing to take people’s bullshit, and calmly and delicately sends some girl to a death sentence, in a welcome moment of humor that won’t be reiterated again throughout the album.
Because for the most part, this is, as previously stated, a breakup album, and one that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to begging, bargaining and pleading; those stark moments before acceptance comes along. The 1-2 punch right in the middle of the album of “Who You Thought I Was” and “Apologies” is devastating. The former, a sweet reminiscence of her previous dream jobs, of who she wanted to be… only to realize the only thing she wants to be now is better; someone worthy of her love. The instrumentation changes and adds different layers of color, as if it was trying everything in its power - whether it be tongue-in-cheek humor, simple mundanity, or moving honesty - in order to get her to stay. Brandy can keep her cool somehow, but her voice has got too much texture for that despair to be completely lost. And then the latter, a hopeless parade of apologies and ‘sorry’s that she knows won’t go anywhere, as every apology seems to break Brandy too, even if, again, she won’t seem to show it. This time, musically, the electronic meets the organic, if only because it might be the language she needs to speak. It won’t work, but it’s worth a try, right?
All that reminiscing doesn’t stop there. She’ll take a song like “Pawn Shop”, where different stories of old wedding rings and guitars are forgotten and left behind for new stories to be born, and imbue it with a sense of hope that makes these stories so valuable. You can tell she gives a lot of importance to material objects where, not content with that song, she includes “Bad Car”, a homage to an old “piece of junk” that must be put away, but she hates every moment of it. It carries too many precious memories, it’s held a lot of moments that will go away with it. If anything, Your Life Is a Record is a disposition of everything she needs to let go of in order to move on, and sometimes, that includes the physical, and the tangible. New memories can begin, but old ones must die.
That’s something she tries her best to not do, to hold on to those memories. “Can We Be Strangers” is her wanting to do the exact opposite, wishing they had never met, and would have remained unknown who haven’t broken each other so many times. For a moment, it seems like, if she could choose to not have it all happen, she would - erase everything so that the pain never has to happen, a better option than her current situation. Yet, when that’s contrasted with a song as confused as “Who Broke Whose Heart”, a song where she dismisses all possible reasons or explanations as to why things broke apart since she knows the love was there, even if in a tumultuous way, something that the music tries to replicate with its distorted strings. She’s done a lot of introspection regarding the relationship and her own mistakes, yet she’s willing to let all accountability go, simply out of her love for her. It’s a tragic outlook, albeit one that’ll never announce itself as one.
Although, of course, everything has some form of comeuppance. Closer “The Past Is the Past” is a tough one, where the fog of the opening track returns for something subdued and calm, a wave goodbye that realizes it has no choice but to move on; there really is no option. The wheels roll, and the hope of getting that feeling back is fully gone, now replaced with a feeling of being forced to find something else. All the instruments look toward themselves, because they don’t know what’s ahead, and they need to take a minute to fully accept what they’re about to face. Accepting is never something easy, and that burden haunts Brandy’s spirit. It’s not an easy turn to make, but maybe the calm guitars and perky keys could make things a bit lighter, just to see. There are no surprises on Your Life Is a Record, probably because it can’t afford itself to after so much it’s had to deal with. All that’s left is a graceful look at how to say goodbye to something dear to you, with a great pack of tunes to carry along with you. For that reason alone, it’s worth a cheer, and another one. It probably needs them.
Katie Pruitt - Expectations
The main word that comes to mind when I think about Expectations, the debut album from soft country singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt, is ‘engrossing’. Its atmosphere is so dense and rich, it absorbs you into the stories it’s telling, in particular, Katie’s story, which is one to hold dear to your heart. It keeps in mind that the decorations and small details sprinkled throughout the songs are what makes them so special, where the heart and soul are found. You’ll find very little production this year as gentle as the one on here, where the compositions are embellished by calm fireflies that guide the music through the night into the daylight. It captures the stark daytime and the brooding nighttime at the same time like no other release has this year. It makes note of the darkness and the pressure points that have paved the way to where the music is right now, in a better, more accepting, kinder place.
If you hear the album, you’ll realize quite quickly that’s the ambiance that Katie Pruitt is trying to transmit. She’s one focused storyteller, the kind where she knows exactly what she wants to say, maybe because she’s practiced it to herself for far too long. Coming out of the gate with an album as defined as this means she’s been thinking about this for a long time, possibly even as far as she can remember. The main focus of this album is the comfort and love that she can find not only through her relationship with her lover, but also through the acceptance of herself and her sexuality. Raised Catholic, coming to terms with her lesbianism is something that’s taken her through many dark turns, but now she gets to look back on it all and tell her story. The album ends on satisfying, positive, hopeful notes, but before that, there’s a lot that needs to be addressed.
First, there’s the obvious centerpiece of the album, the charming and dazzlingly heartbreaking “Normal”, which sees how her youth was challenged by her questioning and her lack of answers, be it from God or any other power - and she doesn’t shy away from the feeling of wanting to detach herself from who she is. Mary Lambert once said on a top 20 hit, “I can’t change, even if I wanted to”, which contrasts very immediately with Katie’s “If I could be normal, then trust me, I would”. But as much as she focuses on her sorrow and her alienation, she also captures the beautiful feeling of the unspoken teenage feelings that she harvests. She was able to rise above her complications and be content with who she was, and as she sings about being curled up on the couch, as worn out as the girl next to her, the understated acoustic guitar and vocal mixing that dissipates her voice throughout the track, it sounds like this very song would be the one playing as she kisses her lips. “The world us to fit in, but we did the opposite”. This is a coming-of-age story for the ages and one every teenager should have the chance to hear.
And that’s only 1 song! Out of many! Katie Pruitt is a proper songwriter, with a way of creating arcs that feels effortless, even if her lyrics can sound too broad on first listen. She can portray exhaustion and decay in the middle of a cold world on “My Mind’s a Ship (That’s Going Down)”, where traveling - or dreaming about traveling - won’t get her anywhere; only love can. Meanwhile, that exact kind of love is the one that’s questioned and brought to pieces in the most gentle way on “Out of the Blue”, with a composition that tiptoes around the subtler and quieter moments in a relationship, even if those moments are being stripped away from her. But then, she can pull off a song like the title track, a train-of-thought-like song that doesn’t stick to one main melody outside of the straightforward lead guitar riff, as her depression and feelings of not living up to what was expected of her after so many years of studying become too much to bear. She rides the song’s crescendo incredibly well, as she demonstrates she’s got a massive voice that’s willing to wait its turn to come out.
But once again, she doesn’t shy away from those feelings of rejection and fear. If there’s one thing that haunts this album, it’s that - a way to look for something that goes beyond the skepticism within her, so that she can find that magic. The opener “Wishful Thinking” is a beautiful exercise in tearing away why she can feel so burned out by love, because the kind of love she’s been promised by society isn’t ever going to happen. It may be partially because of her sexuality, but she’ll never tell - she’s too tired for that. She’s looked for it that way, and lost, as the aching, crushing climax reveals; “You were never mine” has been a subject way too common this year. That doesn’t mean she’s proven right by the album as it goes on, if “Georgia” is proof of that. A spare piano ballad that details the conflicts of her sexuality with the rest of her family as her fear tries to consume her… only for her to come out victorious in the end. “I told the world, and they still saw me as the same girl”, and she sings it with so relief, as she leaves what she knew to find something that accepts her, and a huge weight is lifted off her shoulders. It’s a grand moment.
If anything, the last 2 songs are a hurrah, a victory lap to and for love in the way she does. They’re joyous and celebrate sapphic love like the trophy that it is. “Loving Her” is the upbeat one, the one that has nothing to hide, the one where she turns away once and for all how the rest of the world might perceive her, and the adoration she has for her partner is truly inspiring, and her vocal performance makes note of the wonderful space between the mix to explore that love. But the closer “It’s Always Been You” reveals once again the introvert Katie Pruitt is, one where there is no world but her and her lover. No other character, the rest of the world has no access to the kind of love they share. And again, detailed songwriting - recalling sword fights with baguettes in the middle of the supermarket while high, making out on some strange balcony all night; thinking about this all the while waltzing until it’s morning. She captures and records intimacy like a gift that she won’t take for granted. She has what she’s always dreamed, and she treasures her existence with generosity and humility. She caps this wonderful album, full of graceful moments, with yet another one. She’s got a bright future ahead of her, but not quite as bright as this album.
Elysia Crampton - ORCORARA 2010
Elysia Crampton is an artist that’s both easy and hard to find. Easy, because her blending of post-minimalist ambient with aspects of Latine music has become somewhat of a norm these past few years in the underground scene, and that’s what her music is and sounds like on the surface. Yet hard, incredibly hard, because her origins and her own way of combining these sounds requires a level of skill not everyone has. Her intentions to translate folk music from her own origins, the South American indigenous Aymarans, with the sensitivities of modern electronic went beyond the novelty, and through the years, transformed her into a proper pioneer. Her sound collages displayed the harsh need of her own people to survive throughout the centuries, yet it also focused on the traditions of said people, as it incorporated elements of what now we call cumbia, and could turn her worlds into dances for her culture. Not only that, but slowly, she, as a trans woman herself, started making homages to Bolivian and indigenous LGBT+ people, and how they still did their best to participate in said cultures. All of this, with an immense backdrop of sounds; rhythmically vicious, sonically looking up at the stars while still keeping a steady hold on the ground and the dirt around her, and musically full of ideas packed into projects that were surprising by their briefness.
ORCORARA 2010 is a different beast, and could possibly be her best work yet. Originally commissioned by the Centre d'Art Contemporain over at Geneva, it’s a considerably different beast. Her main projects never surpassed the half hour - yet, this is 70 minutes long. It’s a mammoth, and one that requires you take your time to properly climb to. More focused than ever before on vocalists and voices, with “misreadings” of various American and European authors - all read in a very clear English, as she tries to reach other worlds beyond her own -, it plays out like an art installation, and one with a story to tell. To let Elysia Crampton explain the throughline in her own words…
“This album follows intergenerational trauma, fugitives of Christian violence in a twilight called Puruma, returning to Mama Cocha, the sea that theorists call Nowhere.
Not one, not world, not body, not God, not salvation, not zero.”
Taking from Incan ontology and physically set in the middle of Bolivia, the album seems to follow a constellation of stars that look above a dangerous and uncertain world, especially such a traumatized one. You can already tell from the opener, a cold, industrial landscape called “Secret Ravine (Chakana En General)”, with piano lines that cover up the middle of a quiet windstorm, a reflective and dark aura seems to cover the grizzly night. Even when it opens up in its second half, and there seems to be a paradise that could be reached, that metallic squeal will still be there, reminding everyone to stay alert, for the danger is never too far away. It is unclear whether they will get to that river or not, but the music will give them plenty of opportunities, and moments to let them take steps forward, as they keep the parts of their culture that they can.
This album will give them many voices. For one, there is the stable, yet ever so slightly alert Jeremy Rojas, who shows up multiple times on this album. His readings involve not only what he’s reading, but the voice himself - so calm, so full of grace in the middle of that twilight. He turns into another texture in the middle of a song like “Dog Clouds”, where the unfazed clouds in the middle of the sunset become witnesses of the lost, when the night is so calm. Yet a song with a confused rhythm like “Sierra Nevada” will also be enhanced by Rojas’ voice, where he seems to be the one thing remaining still in the middle of such a brief piece of moving around as the leaves move around everything - like the inner voice that never lets up, even if the text itself is angry and let down. But there’s also a voice like Embaci on “Grove”, who sounds like she’s singing a centuries-long melody to herself in the middle of a house abandoned in the wilderness, a place to rest even as her voice becomes 2. She sings of longing, of letting go, of regret slowly creeping in, and the atmosphere takes over her to become another ghost of the night.
If anything, there’s one voice that comes in to disrupt the night; an echo to disrupt this journey so we can see what was left behind. Shannon Funchcess’ performance on “Crucifixion” is one of a villain, a purple-shaped villain filled with horror, with the way she comes in to take the mass out of the Earth to destroy what was left. The trauma is spread all across the album, even in its moments of relative peace, but this performance in particular is not one of warning, but one that knows it will haunt the past of so many innocents. The music surprisingly doesn’t take many violent turns, since Funchess herself doesn’t seem like a menace at first glance - but the insistence on incomprehensible Christian mantras to get rid of the cultures that came before them shows up, and even if she gets swollen in the memory, her influence is felt as the song starts focusing on more minute elements, to get rid of that ominous feeling.
That’s the thing. Those moments of peace that can be found will eventually be corrupted. The main pointer here is the centerpiece of the album, the 15 minute long “Morning Star-Red Glare-Sequoia Bridge”. It features some of the most beautiful production out there, with stark, red synths that cover up a night sky that seems to be pleasant, like new age for the broken. Meanwhile, a piano meanders and catches on to so many drifts while Jeremy Rojas makes a profound declaration of his own presence and ideals, with a deep love for what he worships and what he believes in. The music changes plenty, but its stillness remains, as a moment of love as the infinite can suddenly be touched and felt upon… Until it all cracks down, and the red of passion becomes the red of doom, and a feeling becomes crushed in order to give way to a nightmare you can’t remember. Dislocated ideas suddenly must be met with their future being burned down in front of their eyes, and that constellation can serve as a map, a guideline, but it’s not a savior.
Those very same ideals can be questioned with a piece like “Homeless (Q’ara)”, “q’ara” being quechuan for naked, bare. Ironically a very full piece, with drums that come alive at just about any minute, even when they interrupt the winding pianos that don’t exactly know where to go - fitting, since the atmosphere has now turned grey, as it can’t find a way to make amends. It makes sense it’s followed up by “Amaru - Otorongo (Dried Pine)”, ‘amaru’ being an Incan mythological serpent or kind of a dragon, and ‘otorongo’ being a jaguar. Accordingly, it’s a brutal piece, with what sound like distorted record scratches that show, with modern technology, an ancient despair of the unknown, as the walls seem to close in on them. All of this means that “Spring of Wound”, a collaboration with Argentinian percussion group Siete-Octavos, has to be a way out of that wilderness, in order to break away from those woods and those cycles of hurting. It’s not an easy listen - although, it’s the most similar to Elysia’s older work - as the percussion makes the earth rise above the ground and the depths of their instruments reach somewhere better. The batucada may not be the best solution, but sometimes, when all you can turn to is sonic violence, it might just be it. It’s a fierce track that doesn’t let any moment break out slip away.
Yet, as the album begins to wind down, we get a song that conveys a certain innocence that’s not found on the rest of the album, a kind of belief in love that goes beyond cultures and is possibly the most unifying moment of this entire piece. “Crest”, a reading of Bolivian writer Jaime Saenz’ “Someone Must Be Called Twilight”, features the sweet, natured voice of Fanny Pankara Chuquimia, who reads in a much different tone than Rojas; she’s more sorrowful, with each word taking on a different meaning, as if she was reading them for the first time, and understanding their meaning as she progresses. After all the pushing and the testing of the world that this album endures, there’s still a core belief in love, and wanting to feel a sort of cosmic connection with someone that goes beyond the moment they stand in right now. “And there was no such thing called twilight, or to tell the truth, nothing that called twilight… except those called you and I, who could not keep from calling each other twilight.”
There seems to be, at some point, be it announced or unannounced, a kind of inner peace that comes with breaking away from that which tortured you while keeping your beliefs, your traditions, your culture, safe, even if not intact. That search to find Mama Cocha is not in vain, even if it’s torturous to the very end. If the final track, “Flora”, suggests anything, it’s that what’s being reaped by those who stole their territory is something malevolous, dangerous, harmful to everyone. Ending the album like this is powerful, as it crystalizes the consequences of all those steps taken by colonization and genocide that make Native American people so marginalized and forgotten by the rest of society. Those fugitives might have broken through, and something has remained, even if their hands are hurt. But now, it’s time to take care of the elderly and the sick, as those are the ones who need the most help, as they are the ones who remember everything; the carriers of tradition. ORCORARA 2010 may want to settle itself “where the river falls on hard rocks, where no one can cross, where the star shadowed, star colored city lies just out of reach”... but it knows it can’t come true, not anymore - if it ever could happen. The one thing it can do is take care of what was rescued, and make sure that as many people as possible understand and remember what happened, and the history behind these articles and these constellations that made it through. It’s a living, breathing work of art, and it gives to the old new elements with which to tell their story. For that, and that alone, it’s a milestone. Now, as for everything else… we’re only lucky we get to stand underneath it all.
The Third Mind - The Third Mind
Funny thing that happened. Guitar player Dave Alvin, originally from 80s rockabilly band The Blasters and punk rock group The Flesh Eaters - as well as briefly being a member of X in the mid-80s - decides to start a new band, composed entirely of relegated session musicians. David Immerglück, most notably the guitarist of Counting Crows since the late 90s; Michael Jerome, the latest drummer of Better than Ezra; and Victor Krummenacher, bass player of Camper Van Beethoven. Also accompanied occasionally by alt-country/americana singer Jesse Sykes. They get together to jam and perform covers of their favorite tunes from the 60s, with a particular focus on the psychedelic (The 13th Floor Elevators, Paul Butterfield Blues Band), as well as songs from the 60s folk scene, like “Morning Dew” famously covered by the Grateful Dead, or “The Dolphins” by Fred Neil. To cap it all off, they also take a chance and do a jazz rock cover of a classic Alice Coltrane song to boot!.By all means, it’s all, for the most part, pretty low-stakes. The songs are classics in their own distinct worlds, and hearing these songs, it’s clear they’re doing this for the fun of it, to exercise their creative muscles. What comes out, however, is a testament and a homage to the timelessness of music; an outlet to pour creative instincts into. This is moving music, in the sense that it compels you to move.
Something very amusing given that this doesn’t seem all that special until the edges are peeled off. We’re always on the search for something new, something modern, something contemporary, something we’ve never heard before… yet, often we forget that we can very much find that in what once was. The Third Mind, taken at face value, is a pretty standard psychedelic rock album, by a bunch of musicians who know how to play their instruments well, and aren’t risking much by playing as a group. What happens with that admittedly simple premise is the start of a gathering of searching for tones and ideas within the established, to find and reach for new readings and new ways of looking at what once was. Its musings on grooves and its sense of musical unrest remind me of a lower-stakes version of Talk Talk’s later material, as Mark Hollis too was seeking to find that ecstatic God beyond him, that figure that could or couldn’t be there. Obviously, this doesn’t reach those very heights, but just for the fact that it tried, it deserves an award.
Their take on Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda” is definitely one to stir things up. Obviously removing the harp and the sax, now replaced with the wailing and moaning of guitars, it’s a powerful entry. The magnificent bassline (or, bass line) creeps around like always, but now with an added sense of dread. The song never rises above to reach for what can’t be touched; instead, it treats the composition like a waltz, a dance with a figure beyond its understanding. Alvin’s guitar already begins to show how it’s willing to break away and demonstrate technical prowess without seeming like it’s showing off. It knows when to stop. That’s what makes the one original composition on the album, “Claudia Cardinale”, a homage to the actress of the same name, so touching. As the sandy beach of the percussion and the leveled drums stay lurking, and the acoustic guitar looks towards the horizon, Alvin’s guitar seems to want to become itself the horizon, but with enough delicacy that it knows it’ll never reach those heights. But damn, isn’t it gonna try.
Most people who have somehow paid attention to this album have centered their energy on the obvious centerpiece, the 16 minute long “East-West” by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and it’s easy to see why. It’s hard not to, of course. First, because of the historical context behind it - it’s one of the first rock songs in history to act like a jazz song, by which it means it’s over 10 minutes of improvisation on top of one main chord and groove. If rock music were a straight line, this song expands horizontally instead of vertically. It’s a song that encapsulates a certain discovery that would impact rock music from then on, and the Third Mind’s rendition of it is a homage and an expansion of that discovery. Second, because it’s an incredible cover by any stretch of the mind. The band sounds like they’ve been jamming for over an hour and this is but a collection of the best moments of that session, but they dare take things even further than the Paul Butterfield Blues Band could have dreamed of. Mainly because they’re now aided by modern production, that allows the tones to be richer, fuller - every instrument gets to have their place, and they’re all frenetic. The rough bass moves alongside Jerome’s incredible drum riffs that shake the song’s core, like a rock concert performed upside down. There’s the harmonica, performed by Jack Rudy, a distant call from the beyond that adds a layer of wistfulness to the track; it knows something we don’t, and it’s taunting us for it. And of course, there’s Alvin’s guitar, a clear sky being dominated by that old north wind, as it rattles on and the rest of the band only needs to accommodate quickly - and so they do. The entire band is so well synchronized, they create an immense (w)hole that creates a sense of harmonic unity that can be devastating and destructive.
That, for a lot of the people, is the real highlight. But if you listen closer, you’ll find the 2 tracks featuring Jesse Sykes as a lead vocalist are even better. Dave Alvin, great guitar player as he is, is not the best singer, so having an accompaniment of this caliber is a treat. Her voice sounds aged, wise beyond her years, as if she had seen what she’s singing way too many times before. Their rendition of Fred Neil’s “The Dolphins” is an empathetic and careful one, where the instruments never stray too far away from each other. The composition is too delicate and precious to disrupt it too much. Neil’s message of peace through eradication of hate sounds a tad too naive nowadays, but the Third Mind focus less on that, and more on the melancholy and the questioning of something long gone - “I’ve been searching for the dolphins in the sea/Sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?”. Alvin’s guitar runs in circles around those questions, and the added use of vibraphone courtesy of D. J. Bonebrake is welcome, as the music runs into that world of fantasy. Yet, as Alvin and Sykes cap it off with the constant repetition, “This old world may never change”, it’s clear they’re not singing just for the sake of singing - there’s an ideal older than them, older than the song they’re singing, that they want to reach. The music becomes a way to pursue that sense of hope.
That sense of hope is put to test and challenged on what might be the appropriate highlight of 2020, their cover of “Morning Dew”. To get context out of the way, this was a folk song written in 1962 by Bonnie Dobson, and it’s a song about 2 worn out lovers in the middle of an apocalypse. They’re the last people left in the world, and they’re heading towards their death. One of them is still filled with a sense of wonder, with a sense of finding those last remains of humanity, while the other one is gone, beaten down, with all hope gone. This song is a conversation between the both of them. Innocent hope, and broken pessimism. What happens when nothing is left, but your own head and the one beside you? “I thought I heard a baby cry this morning”; “You didn’t hear no baby cry this morning”. Even if the song doesn’t take either side, it’s mournful, skeptical, willing to not fall into that game of hope. The composition plays out like a call and response, too, between 2 long-winded musical ideas getting together to contradict each other in the subtlest ways possible.
The Third Mind, taking some cues from the Grateful Dead, turn this song into a story of true despair, of clinging on to the last hopes imaginable, and hoping they don’t get turned down. Jesse Sykes plays both parts, and both voices are equally sung with a tone of being hurt, getting disposed of, as one person’s hope turns into confusion, and the other person’s coldness turns into a prayer of wanting to be released of this back and forth - they can’t play the game the other one needs to in order to stay sane, they can’t walk them out in the morning dew. This album was released in February of this year, yet few lines this year were as poignant as, “Where have all the people gone, my honey?/Where have all the people gone today?”, “There's no need for you to be worrying about all those people/You never see those people anyway”. Jesse, on the verge of breaking down every time she enters the mic, but the band even more so. Immerglück’s interplay with Alvin is brief but miraculous, as they face their different points of view as Alvin needs to reach for something else to find that nirvana. As the song progresses, the groove transforms from those blue skies from before into a different creature; one that sees and recognizes those buildings that led to destruction, contaminated seas that led to empty shores who couldn’t be recognized by anyone, the sound of the never ending cities being transported into nothingness. Eventually, it becomes so enormous it takes over the entire world, as everything becomes complicit in that suffering from those 2 individuals. They compose the entire world now, and they carry all of its burdens. The song cries with them, and dissipates with their existence, as their worries slowly grow smaller, and the world fades away with them. A tragic outcome.
The album ends with a rather weak, bland and pointless rendition of the 13th Floor Elevators’ “Reverberation”, the one moment where they feel like a psychedelic rock cover band without anything to add. It doesn’t kill the mood of the album - it being the final track, you can easily skip it, but it’s also a nice palette cleanser to move on to different music after so much intensity. I can’t tell if it’s by accident or by divine intervention, but The Third Mind came up with a way to look at older, more established music with fresh ears and fresh eyes, and they did so by sticking to the sounds and the ideas that made those original tunes so vibrant in the first place. They’ve managed to put those stories in a contemporary context. Sometimes, what you need to revolutionize is to do things very well and with a lot of passion. That’s what comes through in this self titled record, and one that hopefully won’t be the last. It permeates the mind, puts thoughts up in the air for the listener to catch them, and unabashedly loves what it’s doing.