"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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There's often a Narnia-like quality to the settings, and such is the case with "Opposite Day."
The shadow of the harp that dominates the stage drops a line of darkness across Joanna Newsom's face.
Ry Cooder has a way of preserving the past, an ability to rekindle the soul of a fading legacy in music, immortalising it with the kind of romantic affinity one would normally hold for our own private memories.
Often is the case with stalwarts of the music industry that, twenty albums down the line, when the grey hair has long since begun to set in, the artist will tell us that they're "getting back to basics" by delivering a "storytelling" album written in the third person.
This is what jazz would sound like in the fictional underworld of William Burroughs: cut-up, altogether unreal, but simply mesmerising.
Back with a much deserved headline slot, the group now had a more than ample timeframe to perform in, the crowd size was condensed to a mere fraction of the 115,000 that attended their previous Irish performance, and a gremlin-free PA system was as good as one could hope for at an outdoor gig.
The sounds of swishing water begin "I'm Gluck," and soon a droning reverberation (which feels as if it's been there, underlying everything, at the album's spine the whole time thus far) resumes the venture (by boat rather than car this time) through a landscape of dreams. You can virtually see the twilight setting, feeling as if you're fading away from the world, and just when you're about to fall off asleep…the crass sound of a pNEUmatic drill suddenly blows that peacefulness into smithereens.
It doesn't take long to become familiar with the image of the duo laboriously recording their work, hidden from sight in a bunker while living in the remains of a commune in some secret, rural location. The world of "Turquoise Hexagon Sun," as we may perceive it, is a kaleidoscope of desolate green pastures, ice-cold seas, abandoned lighthouses, and a horizon of serene blue skies. Somewhere in the belly of a forest near Scotland's Pentland hills, hallucinogenics are being consumed around a bonfire, their music the soundtrack to the experience.
Tthere's a certain dark, mysterious jubilance throughout Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs."
