With “Sod’s Toastie”, Tom Greenhouse and his intrepid band of sonic explorers are more assured and confident than ever throughout this sublime sophomore album.
While frontman Tom Greenhouse’s off-kilter observations and bizarro anecdotes remain front and centre, this time round the band up their game with a more vigorous sound that keeps pace with Greenhouse’s wholly distinctive lyrical style. Greenhouse continues to revel in telling increasingly surreal short stories, rejoicing in the power of the deadpan one-liner and bedecking his songs with far-flung cultural references. But now the band employ a variety of techniques with improved pro-duction, from the impulsively bashed keyboards and jubilantly repetitive guitar stabs that have be-come their trademark, to flirtations with–heaven forbid!–melody, chord progressions and arrange-ments which elevate their tried-and-tested blueprint into a more exciting and cohesive whole.
Opener “Musicians” is the perfect embodiment of this conscious development. Here, Greenhouse re-counts a sarcastic tale of half-truths that see him galavanting around town trying to put a band to-gether. Sonically, it begins with a caustic callback to the group’s first EP “Crap Cardboard Pet” and its über-minimalist aesthetic. But by the end of the song a joyous festival of afrobeat-inspired in-struments including samba whistles, bongos and saxophones are added to the mix as the front-man, ironically, fails in his mission to recruit more players. With “Get Unjaded“, the band have somehow conjured something close to pop, without abandoning the repetition and wit that’s relished by their early fans.
“I Lost My Head” also adopts a jangle-pop sheen with a luscious synth melody, as the frontman ditches the spoken-word for a surly croon (his first known attempt at actual singing!) that provides a welcome breather from the onslaught of dense recantations that are the band’s bread-and-butter.
While the lyrics here are still often humorous and political, Greenhouse has also notably expanded his interests on this album to include a new host of topics.
The influence of extraterrestrials, for ex-ample, infiltrates the subject matter frequently. On The UFOs, the mysterious protagonist Blinkus Booth’s isolationist lifestyle is apparently interrupted by the spectres of otherworldly visitors, while closer The Neoprene Ravine feels like an extract from a deep space rock opera. Here, jaunty and angular instruments pile-on as we are fed images of an interstellar Spinal Tap, the titular fictional band “The Neoprene Ravine” who are “the alien equivalent of the Velvet Underground” and include an alien Lou Reed yelping “too busy sucking on my little green ding dong!”.
Meanwhile, “Hard Rock Potato” is propelled by a vortex of keys and synths, a real noise-pop gem comprised of real guitar chords (!) and rock-orientated riffs. Here the stream-of-consciousness lyrics take shots at the sinister financial industry, and include one of the many top-tier one-liners on the album: “It’s not gambling if you’re wearing a tie (even if you’ve got no trousers on)”.
On “Sod’s Toastie”, The Cool Greenhouse have pushed their distinctive flavour of post-punk to the point of perfection – their incongruous riffs, alchemical instrumental chemistry, and irreverent spo-ken-word vocals are a delight throughout. “Sod’s Toastie” is hilarious at times, and at others just hi-lariously good – a not-so-difficult second album.
The infectious rendition from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers of the J.J. Cale classic “Call Me The Breeze” premieres today, accompanied by a stellar music video directed and hand-illustrated by Emmy Award Winner Jeff Scher. The new track is taken from the highly-anticipated “Live At The Fillmore, 1997” — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ first live record in over a decade .
The video features characterful animations of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers performing “Live At The Fillmore”, hand drawn by educator and filmmaker Scher. “‘Call Me The Breeze’ is an anthem to freedom,” says Scher, whose body of work includes music videos for Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and others as well as pieces in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Harvard Film Archive, The Centre Pompidou and The National Film Archive of Austria .
The most direct metaphor for me was driving and the joy of unrestricted motion which made me think of the way things blur when they fly past. I was excited to try and recreate that motion blur with paint and pastel. I started with the first shot and just kept adding shots and cutting it together as I went. You might say it just evolved as it grew. Making the video in this way felt like I’d incorporated the spirit of the song into the process of making the video.”
For the 20 shows on the legendary Fillmore 1997 run, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers dropped their stadium tour setlist and instead experimented with alternate versions of classic Tom Petty songs and tributes to artists they love. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were long-time fans of J.J. Cale. The band frequently played his songs in their sets, and Tom often played Cale songs on his acclaimed Buried Treasure show on Tom Petty Radio. “Call Me The Breeze” is one of two J.J. Cale covers on “Live At The Fillmore”, alongside “I’d Like To Love You Baby”.
Over the last few months we’ve released our Self Titled (Deluxe Edition) featuring bonus versions of “Wet Blanket,” “Wasted,” and “Get Off” from a BBC Radio 1 session, a limited edition 24” x 36” Self Titled 10 year anniversary poster featuring an illustration by Rick Froberg printed on metallic foil, “Come On Down” featuring our dear friend Joe Talbot of IDLES, “Heaven’s Gate”, and brought back Self Titled on cassette with clear shell with black liner. If you’re missing any of these get them here today while it’s Bandcamp Friday.
This updated, thirteen-track album features the original ten songs along with bonus versions of “Wet Blanket,” “Wasted,” and “Get Off” from a BBC Radio 1 session at Maida Vale Studios which originally aired on Huw Stephens’ show in 2013.
Asbury Park 1996: Just released, this month’s archive highlights Bruce’s triumphant return to Asbury Park in ’96, which wraps with a lively 24-song closing-night set peppered with special guests, and a “setlist that explores the exuberance of youth and the realities of adulthood, along with tales of those living on the margins.
While his “Born to Run” book and “Springsteen on Broadway” performance served as overt autobiographical projects, Bruce Springsteen’s 1996 homecoming shows in Freehold and Asbury Park were equally if not more confessional.
Sprouting from seeds planted at 1990’s Christic Institute benefit concerts (available in the Live Archive series), Bruce’s return-to-the-Shore shows break the fourth wall and at times seek to provoke the audience by intentionally revealing parts of himself that didn’t necessarily comport with the image of rock’s everyman superstar. Coming home—not just to New Jersey, but the very towns where his music, band, and lifelong friendships were born—is an act of making peace with one’s past. As Springsteen writes in “When You’re Alone,” performed so poignantly here, “I left and swore I’d never look back,” only to be sent “crawling like a baby back home.”
Bruce has been a storyteller since the early days, spinning yarns about Ducky Slattery and the magical meeting of Scooter and the Big Man. But that became part of the mythmaking.
Back in Asbury Park for the first time in decades, he’s in a different sort of dialogue with the audience—not exactly a two-way street (though he does respond to audience shouts on a few occasions), but consciously revealing his truths and gauging response. Case in point: As he makes unambiguously clear introducing “Red Headed Woman,” Springsteen was (and hopefully remains) America’s foremost advocate for cunnilingus.
For all that’s been said over the years about how he became the musician that he is, the story he tells ahead of “Across the Border,” drawing a parallel between the pop music his mother played on the radio and The Grapes of Wrath might be the most instructive. He eloquently connects the roots of the two key themes of his formative work: the yearning to escape one’s circumstances and the desire for human connection.
Both themes are in full display on Asbury Park 26/11/96, the final night of four Shore shows and the closing night in AP. The November 24th performance was previously released in the Live Archive series, where Bruce was joined by Danny Federici, Patti Scialfa, and Soozie Tyrell. That trio returns for the last show, joined by several figures from those seminal Shore years including Stevie Van Zandt, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, Richard Blackwell (who played percussion on “The Wild, The Innocent &The E Street Shuffle“), and the late, great Big Danny Gallagher, on whose living room floor Bruce wrote “a lot of my early work.”
The show immediately acknowledges those early days as Springsteen is accompanied by Federici on “For You” to open, followed by a solo turn of “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the CIty.” There’s nothing retro about the performances, which sound vibrant and in the moment, with Bruce in fine, strong voice. For “Saint,” his strumming adopts the low acoustic sound from the Joad tour arrangement of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” which propels the song to the rafters. On that point, the same can be said of the entire performance, which practically bursts from the stage to the audience. In contrast, Springsteen’s next solo outing, the 2005 tour in support of “Devils & Dust”, can be categorized as more of a lean-in experience, brilliant as it was.
“Atlantic City” gets a passionate if traditional reading. Curious that the song wasn’t part of the original Joad setlists, but it became a staple starting with the European shows in the spring of 1996. The brilliant “Straight Time” was part of the Joad tour core, but curiously it has been played only once since, in Copenhagen 2005.
Scialfa and Tyrell first take the stage for “Tougher Than The Rest,” played only in Freehold and Asbury in a rare acoustic arrangement. “Darkness” is assayed at a blistering pace, and the urgency felt in so many of the night’s performances rings true as Bruce sings, “lives on the line where dreams are found and lost.”
There’s a washboard quality in the rhythmic strumming intro to “Johnny 99” as Bruce blasts harmonica to what sounds like the riff of U2’s “Desire.” It’s another pacey rendition, and Bruce’s heighted Joad voice shifts wildly from high to low, hard to soft, demanding the audience engage.
Next, the first of those old friends, as Richard Blackwell takes the stage on congas for a one-off performance of “All That Heaven Will Allow,” dormant since the last night of the Tunnel tour. Bruce brings out Blackwell with a story about randomly running into him in the woods a long way from the Shore—near the Esalen Institute in Big Sur—after driving cross-country in late 1969. Blackwell is then joined by Tyrell on violin for the comforting return of “All That Heaven Will Allow.”
With Federici rejoining on accordion, Tyrell and Springsteen revisit “Wild Billy’s Circus Story,” and again Springsteen’s singing is spirited and invigorating, even contemporizing the “Wild & Innocent” classic.
The aforementioned cunnilingus advocacy precedes “Red Headed Woman,” though perhaps stumping would be a better word choice. Bruce makes a rare foray into political impressions, doing his take on Senator Bob Dole by way of positing the theory that Dole could have won the 1996 Presidential election if only he’d said, “This is Bob Dole. Bob Dole stands for a strong America; prosperity in every home. Bob Dole stands for cunnilingus.”
“Two Hearts” arrives just in time to turn off the steam, as Patti and Soozie join for this calmer expression of love, teeing up one of the night’s true highlights. “When You’re Alone” was released on “Tunnel of Love” in 1987, but never appeared in a Tunnel of Love Express Tour set. Springsteen finally debuted the song live at the 1993 tour’s Count Basie Theatre warm-up before its more formal resurrection for these 1996 Shore shows, tour-premiering in Freehold.
Why these shows? Bruce gives “When You’re Alone” no meaningful introduction, but the second-verse lyrics are highly apropos of the occasion. In this stripped-down arrangement, Bruce carries a lot of the original melody in his vocals, enhanced by Patti’s rich harmonies, and the result is special. One of only 12 performances ever, this is the last “When You’re Alone” until 2005.
Former single-mates “Shut Out the Light” and “Born in the U.S.A.” are paired masterfully, with the B-side played first, featuring sympathetic support from Danny, Soozie, and especially Patti on vocals. The 1984 title track always merits reappreciation in its original acoustic form.
The NJ shows deviated significantly from the baseline Joad set, but the end of the 11/24/96 show reverts to form for “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “The Line” and “Across the Border.” As they were night after night, each of the three is brilliantly realized, and the addition of “Racing In the Street” between the final two is both a fascinating and fitting addition. Bruce reads “Racing” not unlike a Joad song (that influence can be felt on some of the 1973 songs as well), and the shifted telling makes for an engrossing rendition.
To the encore, and wonderful moments of Bruce seeing and celebrating the local friends who helped get him there. It starts with Stevie Van Zandt, who joins all prior guests and shares lead vocals with Bruce on his own classic “I Don’t Want to Go Home” in its only tour appearance and a unique acoustic arrangement. “Spirit in the Night” is suddenly an ode to the spirit on this night, with Lopez and Gallagher joining the fray on backing vocals.
A shambolic “Rosalita” ensues, where the spirit of the performance is again what matters most, and a video would do more justice to see the joy on the faces of these reunited Shore brothers (and sisters).
Danny and Bruce handle a joyous “This Hard Land” on their own, but not before reminding the audience that the show is a benefit for the Asbury Park Fire Department and the Women’s Center of Monmouth County. The evening closes with “4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy),” Bruce’s beloved ode to the city, the culture, and the people who brought him to John Hammond’s office and eventually MetLife Stadium.
“I got a chance the other night to just watch my kids running around the theatre,” Bruce says in his intro to “Sandy,” “bringing the whole thing sort of full circle.” The same can be said for his own return to Asbury Park in 1996 for one of the most heartwarming shows on the Joad tour.
Words By Erik Flannigan
ARCHIVE RELEASE: Bruce Springsteen, Paramount Theatre, Asbury Park, NJ, November 26, 1996
Last night, U2’s frontman Bono made an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, where he performed U2’s 1987 song “With or Without You” and gave an interview where he discussed his new memoir, “Surrender”.
The U2 frontperson joined Colbert to promote his new memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which arrived on November 1st. As the episode’s sole guest, he discussed a range of topics including the Beatles documentary Get Back, the future of America (a country he believes does not yet exist), and the attack on Paul Pelosi. “America’s on its way,” he concluded. “I’m just so excited to see where you take it.” To close the show, he played a new version of “With or Without You” featuring spoken-word segments from the memoir.
We’re honored to host the one and only Bono for this unique presentation of U2’s classic song, “With or Without You,” complete with spoken-word verses from Bono’s new memoir, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.” Find the book available everywhere now,
Ganser’s “Just Look At That Sky” delightfully descended on the world in July of 2020, I do admit that I mostly did find myself looking skyward, though that looking was often coloured by an ever-present anxiety. The city was coming apart and maybe your city was coming apart too. Maybe atop the buildings of your downtowns there were guns, and men in fatigues. Maybe in front of the libraries, there were tanks, maybe in front of the food banks, there were army patrols. And yet, maybe you found an album or some tunes that reflected the times, which means both everything and nothing at all now, as time fractures into small, elastic shapes, some jagged, some joyful. An album of a moment must require malleability – songs that hold several songs within them.
Ganser is back with a couple of tunes that will anchor spring through fall, a project called “Nothing You Do Matters” (produced by Liars’ Angus Andrew) and the songs are full, biting, sweet and relentlessly tongue-in-cheek. What propels Ganser as a band, for me, is what shines here: their performance of joyful apathy so often has many other moving parts underneath that suggest that they are a band of deep caring, simply unsatisfied with the hands they’ve been dealt by the world. The dark humour seeped into the apathy is the central and most visual part of the magic trick, but it isn’t the trick itself. It is the disappearing bird or rabbit, that which returns safely to the open palm in order to distract an audience from everything else unfolding during its disappearance.
“People Watching” is almost a mini-suite of a jam, which first kicks in your door and then lulls you with what feels like comfort, before tearing your place apart on the way out.
It’s a thrasher of a tune that is more deliberate than breathless, picking its spots to twist the lyrical knife of talk until the words lose meaning, which circle the drain of the song repeatedly, until it has evicted you, or you have evicted it.
“What Me Worry?” fills the space of breathlessness, a sneering romp where each line of lyric feels engaged in a mighty tug-of-war for what comes before and after, simmering with the kind of tension that Ganser has gotten great at – a tension that pushes a listener to the edge before dragging them back to firm ground.
Survival is hard-won. For many folks, it has always been, for many more folks it feels especially hard-won now. Ganser has adjusted to the times. Yes, the lyrics are darker, seem more exhausted with the realities of having to make it to whatever is next. But there’s also real bursts of playfulness and gratitude wrestling underneath these songs. Gratitude for what winning another inch of survival, perhaps. I needed these songs, and you might, too. It’s good to feel, for a moment, that all is not lost. And even if it is, at least we can laugh our way to some meaningless demise.
Los Angeles based Militarie Gun have signed with Loma Vista Recordings and announced the deluxe edition of “All Roads Lead To The Gun set to be released on October 21st.
Formed in 2020, Militarie Gun is defined by the musical restlessness of vocalist Shelton. The band–whose lineup has expanded to include guitarists Nick Cogan and William Acuña, drummer Vince Nguyen, and bassist Max Epstein–draw on a wide range of influences to make something that sounds combative yet accessible, and undeniably their own.
There’s the unhinged guitarwork of Born Against, the propulsive cadences of hip hop, the up-front bass of Fugazi–and most importantly, the hooks. Militarie Gun’s songs are instantly memorable, employing a melodic sensibility that’s just as informed by the work of Robert Pollard and Paul McCartney as it is by Black Flag.
Militarie Gun have shared the visuals for “Let Me Be Normal,” which is directed by frontman Ian Shelton and animated by guitarist William Acuña portraying the band performing in an 8-bit world.
The 12-track project will include four brand new songs, including the new single “Let Me Be Normal” out today, and house the previously released tracks from the first two “All Roads Lead To The Gun” EPs, including the standouts “Ain’t No Flowers,”“Don’t Pick Up The Phone,” and “Big Disappointment.” An exclusive vinyl variation of each of the previously released EPs along with a t-shirt will be launching at the Loma Vista store today as well. Act quickly, as the special editions are limited to 500. Alongside the aforementioned new single,
MilitarieGun is Ian Shelton, Max Epstein, Nick Cogan, Vince Nguyen and William Acuña All Songs Written by Ian Shelton Except “Fell On My Head” By Ian Shelton, Max Epstein, Nick Cogan, Vince Nguyen
Soul music is in Bruce Springsteen’s DNA. If you’re lucky enough to have been at a concert where he has performed “Sweet Soul Music” or “634-5789,” you know that. Even if haven’t, you’ve probably figured it out anyway, by the way he sings some of his own songs, such as “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” and “Mary’s Place” (or, for that matter, the largely forgotten “Human Touch” song “Soul Driver”). And so, on “Only the Strong Survive” (which will be released on November 11th), he takes a deep dive — as he did on 2006’s “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions”— into a genre that means the world to him.
It’s telling that after the title track (was there ever a more Springsteenesque phrase than “Only the Strong Survive”?) kicks off the album, the second and third songs, “Soul Days” and “Nightshift,” are tributes to soul music itself. “Nightshift,” already released as a single, lauds Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson (who both died shortly before The Commodores had a big hit with it in 1985). And “Soul Days” is a nostalgic paean to the singer’s “first love” (i.e., soul music) and “those sweet summer soul days.”
At the end of the song, Springsteen and guest backing vocalist Sam Moore — the Sam & Dave singer who was one of Springsteen’s biggest influences — engage in a little call-and-response.
Springsteen: I wanna hear some Wilson Pickett. And some Joe Tex! I wanna hear some Sam & Dave. Hey, Sam, I wanna hear some Aretha.
Moore:I wanna hear some Ray Charles.
Springsteen: And some soulful Sam Cooke now … I wanna hear some Arthur Conley.
Moore:Well, what about Edwin Starr?
Springsteen: (laughs) Oh, yeah!
“Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” (also previously released as a single, and embedded below) is the most feverish song on the album, while “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” boasts its most glorious production: a Phil Spector-style wall of sound. Spector was a big influence on Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album, of course. I listen to Springsteen’s “The Sun Ain’t GonnaShine Anymore” and I imagine that’s what the song would sound like if The Righteous Brothers were singing it and Spector was producing, in the mid-’60s. It is amazing.
Which brings us to the album’s production: Springsteen and Ron Aniello co-produced, and do a great job of re-creating the vintage sounds of Motown, Stax and less celebrated record labels. Aniello also plays all the drums and bass himself, plus most of the guitar and keyboards; Springsteen contributes on guitar and keyboards as well. On top of the basic instrumentation are a horn section (trumpeters Curt Ramm and Barry Danielian, trombonist Clark Gayton and saxophonists Bill Holloman, Ed Manion and Tom Timko), backing vocalists (Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, Michelle Moore, Curtis King Jr., Fonzi Thornton and DennisCollins), a 16-piece string section, and extra percussion by Aniello.
No matter how intricate and busy the arrangements get — and, really, you could listen to songs such as “Turn Back the Hands ofTime” and “When She Was My Girl” many, many times and still hear new things each time — Springsteen’s raw voice soars above it all.
Moore is featured on one song besides “Soul Days”: “I Forgot to Be Your Lover.” It’s great to hear the two men’s aching voices, merged together, on lines that Springsteen could have written himself, catching up with one of his young characters, now older and wiser:
I’ve been workin’ for you, doin’ all I can But workin’ all day don’t make you a man Oh, I forgot to be your lover And I’m sorry But I’ll make it up to you somehow
When I first heard that Springsteen was doing a soul covers album, I assumed he would include some of the songs that he’s covered in concert in the past. He didn’t. He’s never performed live versions of any of these 15 songs.
Some, I knew previously (“Someday We’ll Be Together,” “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” “I Wish It Would Rain”). Others, frankly, are new to me (“Hey, Western Union Man,” “Any Other Way,” the breathtakingly melodramatic “7 Rooms ofGloom”). Needless to say, it’s a good thing that Springsteen will be introducing this genre to fans who may have little previous exposure to it, all over the world.
“Only the Strong Survive” grows on me with each listen, as most Springsteen albums have. Would I have preferred a collection of new, original songs? Sure, I can’t deny that. But “Only the Strong Survive” is still quite enjoyable in its own right: Not quite a revelation, perhaps, but a journey through the past that Springsteen had to take, executed with great musical precision and undeniable vocal passion. (And, interestingly, it’s a journey that he probably couldn’t have taken when he was younger: He needed the gravity of age to do these songs justice).
Here is the album’s track listing, along with the original artists (click here to hear the original or, at least, an earlier version of each song).
“Only the Strong Survive,” Jerry Butler “Soul Days” (featuring Sam Moore), Dobie Gray “Nightshift,” The Commodores “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” Frank Wilson “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore,” The Walker Brothers “Turn Back the Hands of Time,” Tyrone Davis “When She Was My Girl,” The Four Tops “Hey, Western Union Man,” Jerry Butler “I Wish It Would Rain,” The Temptations “Don’t Play That Song,” Ben E. King (also recorded by Aretha Franklin) “Any Other Way,” Jackie Shane “I Forgot to Be Your Lover” (featuring Sam Moore), William Bell “7 Rooms of Gloom,” The Four Tops “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” Jimmy Ruffin “Someday We’ll Be Together,” Diana Ross & the Supremes
“Myself In The Way” is the Turnover’s fifth full-length album, and it follows their first pause in consistent touring in almost 10 years. Returning to Pennsylvania to track with longtime friend and producer Will Yip, vocalist & guitarist Austin Getz cites Quincy Jones, Chic, and Dark Side Of The Moon as influences in the way that songs like the infectiously-rhythmic “Ain’t LoveHeavy” and the trippy, disorienting “Tears Of Change” feel wider, deeper and more whole than anything in the band’s catalogue to date.
“Myself in the Way” was born out of Turnover’s desire to continue evolving their sound, making each body of work more exploratory than the last, but it’s also a byproduct of the band’s growth both as individuals and collectively. Armed with a flurry of new ways for the band to express themselves creatively, they challenged themselves to make their most ambitious body of work to date. Co-produced by frontman Austin Getz alongside frequent collaborator Will Yip, “Myself In The Way” sounds more expansive than anything they’ve done, intently honing in on sound design this time around, and yet it’s wholeheartedly more intimate and self-reliant on their vision and execution. Bassist Danny Dempsey painted the cover artwork himself, and longtime touring guitarist Nick Rayfield contributed songs to the album to lend an additional spark.
The Virginia based band Turnover releases their new album “Myself in the Way“. The band’s fifth full-length album includes the previously-released singles “Tears of Change,” which the band shared a new video earlier this week, “Ain’t Love Heavy” featuring Bre Morell, “Mountains Made of Clouds,” “Wait Too Long” and the album’s title track featuring Brendan Yates of Turnstile.
Turnover is also embarking on their headline fall tour run to celebrate the album’s release. The tour features support from George Clanton, Yumi Zouma, Horse Jumper of Love, Video Age, Temple of Angels and Riki on select dates,
Turnover – Myself In The Way CD/LP (Run For Cover Records)
On Voids, composer and producer John Mark Lapham turns his recording project Old Fire into a sprawling mural illustrating the isolation and decay that defined growing up in West Texas, and the losses and frictions he has endured amid such a bleak backdrop. A largely collaborative album, “Voids” employs the talents of featured vocalists Bill Callahan, Emily Cross, AdamTorres, and Julia Holter, along with a myriad of musicians, across half of the 12 genre-fluid, yet impressively cohesive tracks. Combined with the additional instrumental songs, the album spans baroque dream-pop, filmic ambient, raga-like drones, avant-country, and even spiritual jazz—all imbued with poetic heft and seared by the West Texas sun. It was beneath this same sun that, over the past five years, Lapham lost both of his parents, mourned two withering relationships, and shouldered the fallout of the pandemic, before turning his life experiences into the rusted-out scraps that built “Voids” from the ground up.
In the age of remote collaboration, features can easily feel glued-on; the disparities in recording locales, artistic visions, and sensibilities sometimes compound inside each psychoacoustic detail to the point of disproportion. “Voids” makes clear, however, that one of Lapham’s many talents is selecting contributors whose timbres and temperaments soak effortlessly into every atom of his sonic sculptures. “I usually send a collaborator a piece of music with some general ideas of what I’m looking for, and let them develop it as they see fit. I give them some preliminary lyrics I’ve written, or at least some themes of what the song is about, then they write lyrics and ideas based around that,” he explains. “Sometimes there is a lot of back and forth before we get it right, and almost always there are unexpected turns in the process where it ends up being something very different from what we started with. I bring it all together, but the album exists because of their contributions.”
Lapham’s music and visual art—he doubles as a video editor and animator, and has made music videos for bands such as Goat, Throwing Muses, Night Beats, Moon Duo, Jane Weaver, and many others—are stitched with threads spun from the dissonance between his identity and the doggedly conservative cultural atmosphere in which he was raised, ventured away from by adulthood, and ultimately returned to in 2013. As evidenced by the alternating apprehension and expansion on “Voids”, Lapham wields his creativity as a covert weapon against his once and future surroundings as if the act of creating something, anything, is in itself defiant of the cultural, structural, and even climatic deterioration of many West Texas towns. Across the album, and through the concept of Old Fire as a project, he builds a mythical, noir-ish version of his home state and its wide open spaces, painting these fictional narratives with the music.
There is no better narrator for Lapham’s story than fellow Texas resident Bill Callahan, whose iconic delivery personifies the core themes of “Voids”. By the time Callahan appears, he does so over a saw-blade drone that sounds like machinery echoing off corrugated steel walls and out into infinity. “In June, the red rose blooms, that’s not the flower for me,” Callahan intones on the album’s reinterpretation of the traditional song “When I Was In My Prime,” before the hum breaks open into a loose, yet pained confluence of violin and upright bass that recalls Joe Henderson’s 1974 spiritual jazz album, The Elements. Like many on the album, the track dovetails seamlessly into the next, “Corpus,” as Callahan resumes with a baritone recitation of an oblique yet vivid mantra: “Hey Mack, can you bring that boat back?”
The instrumental “Love is Only Dreaming” resolves in a deluge of organic textures that climb over one another until they are abruptly cauterized by the album’s centerpiece, “Dreamless.” Two sides of the same coin, “Love is Only Dreaming” was born out of parts of “Dreamless” (many Old Fire songs begin this way), expanding on its textures, and together creating a small world. “Voids” crystallizes into its most straight-ahead moment on “Dreamless,” a song born spontaneously from some improvised guitar recordings from Alex Hutchins, cut and sequenced by Lapham into a brilliant piece of pop songwriting. Featured vocalist Adam Torres soars to anthemic and gently psychedelic consequence over Lapham’s punctual arrangement of stomping drums and rapturous string-work.
The sombre “Don’t You Go,” a John Martyn cover and the final joint effort with Callahan, features an elegant and evocative piano part, arranged and performed by Thomas Bartlett, and haunting cello by Semay Wu. Icy and glistening, “Window Without a World” stands as “Voids’ most unconventional collaboration, as it began with a sample Lapham took from JuliaHolter’s song, “World.” Unable to sort the timing to work together directly, he eventually lifted the musical backing from “Don’tYou Go,” rearranged the samples, and then added transposed woodwind parts from the instrumental closer “Void IV: Circles” to create the stirring song. Combined with Cross’ beautiful, beguiling “Blue Star,” these initial six songs share a strong link, like different chapters of the same book.
The instrumental latter half of “Voids” stands in equal stature to the album’s vocal moments. In fact, it’s even heightened by a poignant absence of voices after such a compelling round of hosts. Tracks like “Void I: Uninvited” hover and shift like clouds in the Texas sky; steel guitar by Bob Hoffnar, and other soft sirens like clarinet by Thor Harris, guitar textures by ambient composer Wayne Robert Thomas, and saxophone by Joseph Shabason—all of who appear at times across the album—slip in and out of existence.
In this subtler quarter of the album, the listener is walked through a calm and tragic valley indicative of the author’s life while making “Voids”. “I was feeling the brunt of a relationship ending, and the emptiness it left behind,” says Lapham. “Over the course of compiling the album, I lost both my parents, and the pandemic started. These recordings were born out of that loss, and that isolation. The title “Voids” was a natural fit.”
The album concludes with the pleasant clatter of “Void IV: Circles,” wherein Lapham throws all his ingredients into a pot of celebratory catharsis. Drum sets collide with one another gleefully, and harmonized textures scatter and roll about the floor like ornate marbles. Lapham’s collage-work, which up to this point has been smartly restrained, comes unglued as he transmutes grief into relief within a moment-of-death montage of aural imagery.
Across “Voids”, that same awareness of tragedy and loneliness is made palatable by the album’s exciting and varied topography, which stands insubordinately against Lapham’s real-life surroundings. The settlers who established West Texas towns like the one he calls home, Abilene, must have done so with a sense of hope despite the hostility of their surroundings, however inevitable the withering. Similar spirits speak through Lapham’s work, and he welcomes them as fascinating old friends. “That more than anything inspired a lot of what I try to express through Old Fire—faded memories, former glories, places lost in time,” he discloses. “Whatever I was trying to express wasn’t finished with the first album, like a story that was only half-read. It seemed like that was only the beginning, and there was a lot more ground to cover.” If there is ground still uncovered for Old Fire after “Voids”, it’s sure to be lush in spite of—or perhaps because of—the dusty soil beneath it.
The Fat Angel Sings 