The Friday Morning Listen: Spring Heel Jack - Songs & Themes
Published June 27, 2008
Every day is different now. We know this. We're living with it. Things will get better, or so I'm told.
One thing I've noticed is that my daily train of thought has become far less linear. It's like my mood swings have their own mood swings. After my mother received her diagnosis, each day was increasingly filled with a bizarre mixture of love, fear, and adrenaline. It was a near-constant buzz of angst and it completely shattered any attempts at lengthy reflection. Surely this happens just about everybody in similar situations. It's a (very) small victory now that the scattered brain has been replaced by one tripping over what I'll call "nested linearities." This is a high-falutin' way of saying that I'm having good days and bad days — each peppered with good moments and bad: those pesky mood swings.
Throughout this process, I've been listening to Spring Heel Jack's Songs & Themes. Having received it a good number of weeks before the official release, it's been with me at my desk and in the car for quite a while. It has also been one of the many musical casualties that have suffered right along with the disintegration of my thought processes. I just couldn't write about it. I couldn't write about anything.
So yesterday, while stuck in traffic on the long drive home, it occurred to me that the record's varied and slowly-developing sonic vignettes pretty much parallel my current thought processes. Spring Heel Jack has over the years, moved away from drum & bass to embrace a more open, searching kind of music. The easy (read: lazy) description would be "free jazz," but that doesn't really cover it at all. Most of the selections here present as two-chord vamps over which an impressive set of guest artists (including John Tchicai and Roy Campbell Jr.) develop melodies, counter-melodies, and the occasional violent outburst. Each song is distinct, even as the basic structure (if it can be called that) is employed. I'm reminded of Miles' In A Silent Way, but taken a little farther out.
Mom would have said, "When are they going to stop practicing?"
Mark Saleski is a writer and music obsessive based out of the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. On his best day, he hopes to channel the ghosts of Lester Bangs and Jack Kerouac. He spends the hours of 9:32PM to 1:37AM carving out music reviews and essays for Jazz.com, Blogcritics.org and other publications.
- The Friday Morning Listen: Spring Heel Jack - Songs & Themes
- Published: June 27, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Culture: Family and Relationships, Music: Jazz
- Part of a feature: Friday Morning Listen
- Writer: Mark Saleski
- Mark Saleski's BC Writer page
- Mark Saleski's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
The circumstances have been different for me, but I can in some ways identify with a piece of this. I've had CDs stare at me, daring and demanding me to write about them and I've returned their commands with a blank stare of my own, "I've got nothing. I've got fuckall to say to you and about you." Most of the time it stays that way. Sometimes, though, out of nowhere comes a small thread and from that thread comes an article. It sounds arrogant to say those tend to be my best and I'm not sure I've got the perspective to say that, but I will say some of those tend to be my favorites.
I hope good days and good moments begin to outnumber the bad.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/78474)
It is crazy how most of us attribute writing as a linear activity. That we need to get into a routine to write out something that is most times non-linear.
I find that as the years have passed, my old writing techniques do not work the same anymore, that I have to adapt them to fit the evolved me.
So maybe it is not a case of you finding the "old" linear pattern that you knew, but creating a new "linear". Just a thought.
And, you know, Spring Heel Jack sounds like a country band name, not an electronic free jazz duo. But I digress.