Music For Fall 2024
Lucca Swain / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – I See a Darkness
The late 90’s and early aughts were a great period of time for a specific niche of down-on-their-luck romantics, poets and songwriters, at least in the sense that there was enough terrible political going-ons and Y2K dread in the world that you could release an album as dismal as I See A Darkness and nothing would seem out of the ordinary. But while indie folk and alt-country icons such as Cat Power, Silver Jews, and Songs: Ohia were releasing music that was just as glum (and just as good) as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, none of them ever went quite as far as I See A Darkness. Here, Prince, otherwise known as Will Oldham, revels in the darkness, pulling songs of striking beauty out of the deepest, most secluded recesses of his consciousness;
“By dread I’m inspired, by fear I’m amused,” he makes plain on “Another Day Full of Dread”. It’s a record steeped in negative emotions: regret and sorrow, self-loathing and misanthropy. But Oldham’s externalizing never crosses the threshold into nihilism. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel to be found within the elegance of these songs, in how they murmur and sway through their deceptively simple folk progressions, in how lovely they all sound.
Even in its most pitch-black moment on the title track, where Oldham sees himself facing his worst and most dangerous urges, he still manages to find solace and hope in the company of another: “And did you know how much I love you/ Is a hope that somehow you/ Can save me from this darkness?”
R.E.M. – Murmur
Yes, R.E.M. made “Losing My Religion,” but they also made Murmur. Even while ignoring the seismic crater this record left on the development of alt-rock and post-punk in the 1980’s, R.E.M. ‘s debut is still alternative rock par excellence. Despite how much of its DNA has been replicated and tweaked and scattered across practically all of indie, Murmur still sounds totally idiosyncratic, though it might not seem that way at first glance, considering how the bright, all-too-easy guitar stylings of Peter Buck, alongside the mumble vocals, and meaningless stream-of-subconsciousness wordplay of Michael Stipe could potentially come off as blasé or teetering dangerously close to “dad rock.” Yet, Murmur’s real beauty lies in its weirdness, in the indescribable uncanny quality that seems to pervade every corner of the record.
There are certainly plenty of strange musical moments, like the eerie “Perfect Circle”, or the bizarre banging and echoing in the background of the already outlandish jaunt “We Walk”. But even putting aside moments such as these, the overwhelming tone of the album is still one of total timelessness, a record stuck in a decade that never happened and never will. Despite its age and influence, the whole of Murmur sounds completely fresh, as if R.E.M. struck a supernaturally perfect balance between the 70’s post-punk of Television and Talking Heads, and the would-be jangle pop of successors like Yo La Tengo and The Sundays. Essentially, no one ever got it this right again.
There are irresistible sing-alongs like “Radio Free Europe” and “Talk About The Passion”, and more somber, undeniably beautiful moments like the aforementioned “Perfect Circle”, though where Murmur finds itself at its strongest is in the moments where R.E.M. manages to unleash boundless, unrepentant joy, like on “Laughing”. One of Murmur’s strongest songs, it’s a tune with an arpeggiated riff on par with Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” and a shockingly sturdy groove, along with an incomprehensible earworm of a verse. Michael Stipe sounds genuinely effervescent, Bill Berry is writing some of the best riffs of his life, and Peter Buck is drumming his heart out. When the chorus hits, and the whole band bursts out into uptempo harmony and rhythm, it’s hard not to smile at just how effortlessly enthused they sound.
Pescado Rabioso – Artaud
Maybe the greatest failure of the classic rock canon – among its many – is failure to include the music of non-English-speaking, non-European artists, because if any publication who ranks or organizes the supposed “greatest” music of all time was serious, they would have recognized the work of ingenious Argentine prog pioneer Luis Alberto Spinetta long ago, and Artaud would be among his most venerated works.
Spinetta was always ahead of the curve both in Latin America and internationally – as Almendra, he was already incorporating jazz and psych influences into progressive rock song structures in 1969, at nearly the exact same time as English-speaking contemporaries such as Frank Zappa and King Crimson. On Artaud, though, he concocted something much more nebulously defined, a folk-rock album with the unfettered rhythm of jazz, and the circular song structures of prog.
Standout “Cementerio Club” is a full-on goth-tinged blues jam, more steezy guitar solos and lowkey shuffling than Spanish-language poetry or philosophical musings – though when Spinetta’s voice does occasionally enter the mix, he sounds pretty damn dejected; “Que solo y triste voy estar en este cementerio/ Que calor hará sin vos en verano,” he laments, “How lonely and sad I’ll be in this cemetery/ How hot it will be without you in summer.”
Artaud is actually a solo project from Spinetta, recorded after the dissolution of Pescado Rabioso as a group and released under the band’s name. At times, the solitary setting which the music was conceived in shows in some of these songs. “Cantata de Puentes Amarillos”, the album’s lengthy, cavernous centerpiece, sits at the heart of this feeling. Performed entirely by Spinetta, the nine minute, multi-part suite consists largely of the Argentine songwriter and an acoustic guitar, both heavily reverbed to the point that it sounds as though Spinetta’s voice is bouncing off the walls of a small cave. The song shifts phases subtly multiple times throughout its runtime, though unlike most prog-adjacent music of the era, there are no grand theatrics to accompany the music from part-to-part, and the focus never shifts from Spinetta and his guitar. For a song as long as it is, “Cantatas de Puentes Amarillos” stays shockingly stripped back and grounded, limiting its scope to one echoing voice, an acoustic guitar, and a plethora of sporadic sound effects, as if that’s all the music needs to sound good. And because it’s Spinetta, it actually sounds amazing, somehow.