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March 24, 2022
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
I've mentioned before how Bandcamp is an essential stop in any music discovery internet jaunt, especially for listeners committed to tracking down and supporting independent artists. At present, it's about the only place you'll find Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster's inspired new collection, No Tongue Can Tell. At R&B HQ, we've followed the Fayetteville singer-songwriter since his days as one-third of Water Liars, embarking on a solo career with Constant Stranger (2016) and 2019's Take Heart Take Care, and serving alongside Will Johnson as Marie/Lepanto (Tenkiller in 2018 and last year's Gulf Collide). Of his solo debut, we guaranteed there's not a more lovely, more quiet, more intense record out this year.
Subsequent years have prompted Kinkel-Schuster to plug in and to generate more noise, though that's only served to ramp up the intensity. Similar to Will Johnson, he balances intimacy with brawny guitars, lyrics shared in confidence in support of music played with increasing confidence. His perspective has evolved along with that music, to the point where he said of Take Heart: ... there are glimpses and nods to the dark, but the dark is not winning anymore.
Turns out we begin in the dark on No Tongue, or more specifically in a church: I crossed myself and counted back from ten / and I welcomed the darkness in, Kinkel-Schuster sings on "Rosewater". The sound is warmly lo-fi, maybe decidedly so, with nearly every instrument played by the songwriter himself. The anti-hymn casts a caustic eye on the hollow pageantry, finally condemning it all as a rosewater bath full of horseshit. It's an especially damning moment for the artist who has followed his truth into some uncomfortable places, even as "Rosewater" is lyrically gorgeous, likening the edifice to ribs of an ancient grounded ship.
Kinkel-Schuster's songs avoid easy avenues to meaning, it's the logical extension of his continuing quest for moments of truth. On "My Heart My Home" he embraces something far simpler: the bliss of relationship. A clean, acoustic pop track, it's as straightforward a statement as he's made, wavering guitars holding us aloft: we're laughing at ourselves / we can't believe our luck. More commonly, Kinkel-Schuster is staring down thornier affairs. Behind GR Robinson's biting guitar, "Is It Lost" seems to caution the listener against embracing a preordained clockwork universe. Robinson's guitar tears through about half of the tracks on No Tongue, suggesting an unpredictable compliment to JPKS's measured piano.
Throughout his career, Kinkel-Schuster has identified touchstones from literature and the arts. Here, he tags the late poet William Stafford on the title cut, where the singer's layered vocal joins a melodic picked guitar and keys: Who made that line between living and dying / heavy as a tree just felled. The heavy drums and growling electric guitar of "Mama's Cash" soundtrack a story of addiction a'la Nico Walker (author of 2018's Cherry). Kinkel-Schuster celebrates little-known blind ragtime gospel singer/pianist Arizona Dranes on the hymnlike "Arizona": As for me the keys of this piano / are the closest I have felt to Jesus' face.
JPKS's third solo record provides every song with a fuller band accompaniment that shares more with his Water Liars or Marie/Lepanto collaborations. The muscular "Someone Else's Dream" hits like a Centro-matic number. The project's quietest track, "Soft Spot" occupies a satisfying acoustic pocket of strings and keys. Even from within that peace Kinkel-Schuster advocates for a little noise: I know there is a good bit to be said / for hanging in and singing as loud as you can yell.
The Fayetteville songwriter continues to chart his own course on No Tongue Can Tell, with lyrics that merit reading like prose and music that sprouts from the fertile Southern ground of roots, rock and folk. The new songs offer the solace of a kindred sound even as JPKS wrestles uneasily with the dark that he knows better than to simply dismiss.
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