TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket
September 30, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
Canadian folk 'n soul multi-instrumentalist Leif Vollebekk embodies his music like a mystic. Since his 2010 debut, through his reliable catalog, he has evolved from a mere songwriter to something more, paring his work back to its essence, trusting what's left. Largely composed during the pandemic, Vollebekk's fifth full-length was reportedly guided by stories of philosophers and scientists, people of ideas who the artist discovered had also pursued alchemy, or spiritualism, or phenomena beyond our material reality. On the ecstatic eight-minute "Sunset Boulevard Expedition", Vollebekk sings: When the world comes I'll listen / To that strange intuition / Let nothing cloud my vision. His simple piano is joined by floating strings and eventually a full children's choir. Like Hiss Golden Messenger, he leans into Van Morrison's mystic, deploying repetition, rhythm and imagistic poetry for a deep groove that carries through his music. Vollebekk himself handles much of the instrumentation and production, though he is joined by bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Jim Keltner, as well as supporting vocalists Angie McMahon and Anais Mitchell. Steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar applies her own magic to "Southern Star", adding glints of color to the piano-based arrangement: You're a map with no folding lines. "Moondog" begins with fingerpicked guitar and a low heartbeat drum until the swell of Rob Moose's strings lift the track: Sometimes there's magic, sometimes it's hid / Half of magic is just hiding. Vollebekk's singing is simple but expressive, slightly rasped at the edges and capable of unexpected soul on cuts like "False-Hearted Lover" and "Mississippi". The latter features a transporting guitar solo that recalls the American South: Mississippi / A river in a thousand drops / Come on, Jesus, show me what you got / Don't it taste good / That sweet corn, country rain / The rocks, the silt, the sand of the ages. Even with the occasional string arrangement or electric guitar, the arrangements on Revelation are perfectly roomy, creating space for the singer to thread his vocal throughout. "Rock and Roll" is the project's most anthemic track, recalling a dream about Jeff Buckley, Vollebekk scatting with sha-la-la's and shoo-be-doo-wop's. The closing "Angel Child" adds a country lilt to the piano, and a typically searching lyric: I have been looking, don't know for what / And if I find it will I recognize it? Leif Vollebekk has identified Revelation as the album he's always wanted to make. There's an alchemy in his ability to craft meaning-filled music by eliminating extraneous noise, creating space and inviting the spirit to roam.
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Merce Lemon comes from Pittsburgh, and she sells wooden spoons on her website. She passed the pandemic sleeping under the stars, wandering across nature, and writing songs about what she saw and felt. Wind, berries, lots of birds apparently. With some support from co-producers Alex Farrar and Colin Miller, and some of the same instrumentalists who played behind MJ Lenderman on his recent album, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild turns the diy indie folk from Lemon's first couple solo projects outside-in. In January, she shared a couple Bonnie Prince Billy covers, a fellow wanderer whose meandering folk has served as an inspiration, including his pastoral imagery. On "Crow", Lemon observes, A murderous flock beating the wind / They don't need any friends / They're up to their necks in them. There's a wildness to her songs, a primal quality that's expressed sometimes in Reid Magette's muscular electric guitar, sometimes in Lemon's vocal delivery, often in her imagistic lyrics. On "Rain", she sings, I miss you like the wind hugs wings, her rhythm acoustic guitar strumming beneath pealing electric and sturdy percussive accents. Lemon's songs are rarely predictable, riding currents of sound in whirls and eddies into less common rhythms and time signatures. "Blueberry Heaven" pauses, then skitters forward until banjo and harmonica appear for the final third in a more familiar pattern. The results can be mesmerizing, making Watch Me a frequently very pretty experience, the mind wandering through the sometimes woozy arrangements. Even on Lemon's more traditionally structured songs like "Birdseed", she can sound like a hybrid of Joni Mitchell and Neko Case, with Xandy Chelmis on pedal steel and Landon George's fiddle: I'm the bird that sings so goddamn loud / It wakes you up at dawn. "Backyard Lover" is a patient, smoldering impression of a friend's passing: Now I am falling to a dark place/ Where just remember her death's / About all I can take. Even in the midst of their ambience and internalness, Merce Lemon's songs can be corporeal and grounded in very tactile things. On the closing title cut: A tree fell, I smell the wood / And the bark is coming off / I write my words down on it. Like Bill Callahan, her work can be both slightly alien and intensely familiar. Gorgeous in its attention to the plain things.
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