Simon Joyner - 'Songs for the New Year' (Sing, Eunuchs!/Shrimper)

Songs for the New Year is a record of quiet, intense songs; its lyric sheet takes up two full pages and it's not in a large typeface. Joyner often pens lengthy tracts, never at this point in his career content to repeat a simple mantra or let less do more. This isn't a criticism, nor is it meant to convey that he is some radical experimentalist in form – there's still verses and repeating choruses, the basic building blocks of the song. But a tune like 'Parachute' shifts through so many different ideas over a few minutes that it needs to be listened to again to be fully absorbed. And even after almost twenty years I still haven't fully digested Songs for the New Year. The title would indicate that this album has a theme of newness and rebirth, and I suppose it's there, but it's really about winter and coldness taking over. I can imagine the Omaha winters are stark and harsh; here, it's just beginning in Helsinki so it's a perfect soundtrack to watch the snow fall. The album opens with 'The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll', a song that was not on the album of the same name and wouldn't have really fit there anyway, but here it's perfect. It functions as a gateway to the rest of this record, with Chris Deden's echoey piano notes and Joyner's gentle voice providing the foundation for this song of journey and escape. So many of Joyner's songs seem to be about travelling, or at least trying to get somewhere, and this is almost like a meta-tune, a skeleton key to the rest. The song I've gone back to the most over the years is 'Two Friends Take a Bow for the Record', describing just what its title indicates. Distance is again a theme, though here's its emotional distance, and this requiem for an ending friendship is complex without being bitter, grimacing through pain without resorting to irony. It's a feeling we've all lived through, yet has rarely been chronicled in 4/4 (or any other) time. The slow, plaintive pulse of the music allow Joyner to inhabit the narrative, and his voice sounds less warbling than on previous records, driven by the honesty and conviction of what he's singing about. Loss, again, is a recurring concept; these friends are certainly from the same Joynerverse of characters that narrate 'Born of Longing' or 'I Wrote a Song About the Ocean', who yearn to escape from their own memories. 'Disappear From Here' closes the record and is the most stripped down, just Joyner and his guitar, and the way it proceeds through a line of verses reminds me of Neil Young closing On the Beach with 'Ambulance Blues'. The rural themes so prevalent on Heaven's Gate return, with winter explicitly discussed, and the final moments really feels like a man trying to intentionally fade into nothing. This record is so quiet and it's also recorded in an intimate way, with carefully chosen arrangements - the accordion playing that I raved about on the last record returns here, and is just as beautifully understated. I wouldn't call this lo-fi, hi-fi, bi-fi or any other kind of fi - it's merely plain ol' fidelity, and when you turn it up, it doesn't sound richer or more complex; it's like this was meant to be listened to quietly, while a candle burned. Songs for the New Year is the end of an era, for after this Joyner began his more heavily orchestrated Truckstop era, another rewarding period of his insanely prolific career. Unfortunately I never managed to acquire physical copies of any of that stuff so we have to end the discussion of Mr. Joyner's output here, but this is a beautiful and precise place to do so.

Simon Joyner - 'Heaven's Gate' (Sing, Eunuchs!)

For those not familiar with the music of Simon Joyner, I strongly encourage you to begin investigating. Heaven's Gate may be a good starting point. It's a much more quiet record than Cowardly Traveller, shaking off the ramshackle indie rock residue in favour of an intimate, acoustic folk template. His singing is front and centre, warbling and unpolished, which delivers a special glow to the first-person narrated songs. The other accompaniments are likewise spare, just a few drums here, some organ there, rarely taking the spotlight, but when it happens (as the violin and cello on 'Kerosene') it's remarkable. The title of this album reminds me of the failed Michael Cimino film I never saw, though probably now most resonates with the death cult who became nationally prominent a few years after this was released. But 'Kerosene', rather than being a Big Black cover, uses the literal gate of heaven as a metaphor for a chronicle of a woman turned away from something, full of rural and apocalyptic imagery. As these songs are all reasonably long, Joyner has time to really stretch out lyrically and paint with words. 'Three Well-Aimed Arrows' probes his own subconscious and is the most rickety tune, and 'The Black Dog' gets almost spooky. 'Farewell to Percival' ends the record as a long quest song, ostensibly a farewell but also full of surreal and adventurous imagery, and all prodding along with Chris Deden's simple drums and organ playing behind Joyner's guitar. This is the most unflashy of accompaniments and it's perfect, though only the second best musical gesture on the album. The best would be on Heaven's Gate's pièce de résistance, 'Catherine', a simple and plaintive song about a mother (perhaps Joyner's own? or maybe it's just a song). This is a song of great, unbreakable beauty, rolling along a gentle strum like a wave, and with a subtle, yet pitch-perfect accordion part played by Bill Hoover between the breaths. Hardcore Joyner fans or Joyner himself may be surprised that I find this song so resonant, especially against other more ambitious works ('Prometheus', or the carved-up Bert Janschisms of 'Alabaster'), but for decades now I've gone back to listen to it over and over, wearing out the vinyl, and sometimes I have to fight back tears to get through it. I don't think it was the inspiration for Jenny Slate's web series of the same name, but that would be improved by overdubbing this song behind each episode. Most things would be improved by a bit of 'Catherine'. 

Home Blitz - 'Foremost & Fair' (Richie)

How an artist progresses in just a few years! The first clue is the cover, where typeface and drawing indicate this will should sound like a Fairport Convention spinoff, though that's a bit of an oversell. At first it's a total red herring (though in the keyboard and harpsichord bits initially heard, especially during 'I'm That Key', there's certainly some influence of more regal, courtly music than before) but then side two's 'Tell Me There' appears and we are in some sort of bizarro New Jersey-Shirley Collins hybrid; where power pop meets ragged bedroom punk and British folk too! Another clue is the voice - Mr. DiMaggio has raised his pitch even higher, or at least is breathing harder behind it. When you focus on the tone of his beautiful yelp-croon, his debt to Scott Miller is even more obvious than before. 'The Hall' has an organ crunch which feels like way more than a one-man recording; it's somehow one of the best Home Blitz songs ever, even if it's hidden at the end of side 1. 'Downtown' breaks into a musique-concrete based bridge over which he pontificates in the most 'Watch Who You're Calling Space Garbage Meteor Mouth' manner possible, and otherwise it's maybe all in the affect, but it's a hell of a method I must admit. And then there's 'Why It Cries', the moment of total free-from experimentation that harkens back more to DiMaggio's other band Car Commericals, or to that one time I was left unsupervised in a music instrument shop that focused on medieval instruments. It's a great expanse of space, which would be described as 'fucking around' to the uninitiated, but it's a vision of existence committed to vinyl, and then erupting in a bit of a jig. Thank god for the ability to hear so much music these days; I keep recalling that collection of Jonathan Lethem essays called The Ecstasy of Influence, which is a great title to describe music like this. It's not like no one ever synthesised different influences in the past, but it feels so much more open these days, which isn't to diminish the marvellous leftfield accessibility of Foremost & Fair - just that it's a bit less of a headscratcher when a young musician can discover so much out there via digital means. I guess what really matters is the curiosity, which is here in spades. I can't wait to hear what he'll do next, if he's still active, that is. 

Guided by Voices - 'Sunfish Holy Breakfast' (Matador)

Even big record companies like Matador make mistakes sometimes. I'm referring to the label which incorrectly lists this as a 33 1/3 rpm release, which gets me every time, so trusting am I of printed materials. But that's the only mistake they made - this EP, really pulled together from odds and ends, has somehow snuck into my personal canon of GbV's greatest works. Maybe it's just a case of right-place/right-time; at this point, Pollard and company could really do no wrong. Two of these songs were previously released ('Stabbing a Star' & 'If We Wait') and both are great, but the latter is transcendent, and also among the most literally written of any Pollard song ever, lyrically. It's another inspirational tune, akin to 'Watch Me Jumpstart', except the collective pronoun 'we' turns this into a group exercise, and the musical progression follows the lyrics. A drunken friend once unlocked it; the first verse is drenched in self-doubt, the drums come in and rouse the narrator towards action, but then doubt returns and he falls back on his knees until ultimately deciding to rush out the door and seize the world. It's also funny that for as much as Pollard has enriched my life with his cryptic turns of phrase, here, where he lays it down honestly and directly, it's even more powerful. What else makes Sunfish Holy Breakfast great? It actually opens with a Sprout tune, and a wonderful one in 'Jabberstroker'. The two sound quite unified in 'Canteen Plums' and 'A Contest Featuring Human Beings'; it's a union that was never quite as solid as during this moment. Most of the songs on this record are build around thick, chugga chugga guitar chords, though it's a testament to the lightness of melody on 'Beekeeper Seeks Ruth' that the mix doesn't get bogged down despite it's limited frequence range and dominance of the bedroom six-string overtones. When you throw in a few ascending 'The FLYing party is HERE!' it can really lift a track up. The thick guitars are full-on during 'Cocksoldiers and Their Postwar Stubble', and no amount of Kim Deal production can save this from its title, one of the most masculine monikers ever composed -- but that's actually beneficial, a faux-meatheadedness. The slow, four-chord progression takes us through a relatively slow melody, and it finds its way into the cortex like the rest of 'em. It still makes me jump around my room and do air-drums along with the rolls (and the vacuum cleaner sound that's on Alien Lanes is also here - maybe it's a bong hit?). Closer 'Heavy Metal Country' is also done in a big studio, but instead of getting the big 'rock' treatment, it sounds like something from the 4AD label circa the late 80s. All the male rock here stuff, it's really just a pisstake, as is the sleeve art -- I think -- which a casual observer may get confused with that one No Neck Blues Band album. A shoutout as well to Jim Greer, who wrote 'Trendspotter Acrobat', which slots in perfectly among the rest. Maybe it's time to check out those DTCV albums.

Close Lobsters - 'Foxheads Stalk This Land' (Enigma)

A long time ago, I dropped $2 on this because a friend raved about it as a forgotten masterpiece of mid-80's college pop. Close Lobsters were from Scotland and affiliated with that "C-86" scene which was a bit before my time but I liked anyway - some day far into the future we'll get to that seminal compilation, but for now there's just a few odd LPs to represent it on these shelves. Bold, brash 80's drum production, clean channel guitarjangle and some (but not too many keyboards) are the foundation; on top you get sweetly sung melodies, occasionally moody and prone to 4/4 confidence. The liner notes, instead of printing lyrics, print poetic riffs on each track which I quite like! I always remembered this being good for the opening cut, 'Just Too Bloody Stupid', but 'I Kiss the Flower in Bloom' jumps out at me now. File under the Field Mice; there's not a whole lot I can say about this except I still enjoy this for as rarely as I listen to it. It's breezy and loose. The bile comes in the vocal delivery on the title track, but the guitars are all still flowery, and the echoey drums situate it all in a very familiar arena. It's only the 8-minute closing track, 'Mother of God', where Close Lobsters stretch out and get more fiery. This is a monotonous exercise in riff-rock, with a huge layered guitar sound that burns out into the night Of course, it sounds a little bit like Big Country. These guys made another album which I've never heard, but my eyes are open for it in the $2 bins of the world.