Following on from last night’s rant, here is something from this year that similarly wears its heart on its sleeve in terms of being angry about specific issues, but puts its point across in a more gently reasoned way.
It’s also one of my favourite albums released so far this year, and stands out for me as it’s one of those records that I could not see my younger self even giving the time of day to, let alone take it to heart as much as I do now. This is because my younger self was an even bigger idiot than I am now. And that’s some going.
Sub Pop has been (sorry, just noticed this. pun not intended) mining an especially rich seam of form of late. the album that once brought us the angry and angsty stylings of Mudhoney, Nirvana, The Fluid and many more, they now bring us (in addition to more artists such as the former) Beach House, Fleet Foxes and Daniel Martin Moore. This latter artist brought us Stray Age in 2008, which is one of my very favourite albums of recent years, and a song that he performed during live shows to promote this album as well as appearing on a limited preorder bonus CD entitled Flyrock Blues (which appears twice during the course of this recording) first brought Daniel’s passionate opposition to Mountaintop Removal (MTR) mining to my attention.
Scarily, MTR is exactly what the name implies – mountaintops are dynamited away to expose the coalseams within. The Flyrocks of DMM’s song are the boulders catapulted miles across the Appalachians, causing damage and poisoning water sources wherever they end up. Quite a mad, destructive way to get coal…
So is this an angry album? Not at all – the only time where the music becomes vaguely aggressive is during the title track’s plea for recognition, a short, punchy number with an urgent backing rhythm. Other than that, it’s a largely relaxed affair from Daniel and cellist Ben Sollee with contributions from several other artists, not least Jim “Yim Yames” James of My Morning Jacket & Monsters of Folk fame.
The overriding musical theme is that weirdest of genres ‘Americana’ which unhelpfully, to these untrained ears, usually means “being from America” . In this case though, it’s pretty spot-on as it’d be hard to imagine this sort of country-based folk originating from anywhere else. It’s mostly a sparsely-arranged shindig, allowing the two main artists room to gently make their respective points about what’s happening in and around their homeland. An early highlight, and possibly the album’s defining song in terms of sentiment and delivery is Ben Sollee’s Only a Song, a Randy Newman-esque light-hearted tune that begins with “I wouldn’t make a sound if I wasn’t so angry”, sung gently and honestly yet still manages to be persuasive in the hammering-home of his points, one of which being the admittance that “this is only a song, it can’t change the world”, which reminds me of similar sentiments sung by progressive punks 7 Seconds two decades earlier where they sang “if I haven’t done a thing for world affairs, at least I’ve shown I’ve tried and I’ve shown that I care”. So on that front, it’s wonderful to see that there are still some artists who – even when recognising their limitations – are still prepared to take a public stand for or against something that is dear to their hearts. Also, proceeds from the profits from this album’s sale go towards ilovemountains.org, an organisation dedicated to bringing MTR mining processes to an end. And how many artists do that sort of thing nowadays?
It’s a largely different album to Daniel’s Stray Age, but still retains his gently soothing tones and cheerfully-comforting outlook, and Ben’s substantial contribution plays wonderfully alongside this. It’s a performance and an album that cares, which seems odd seeing such a sentiment in print, but give it a listen and you couldn’t fail to understand and agree.
It’s a record that manages at the same time to both feed and soothe the angry young man that I am proud to say still exists within me, and that’s a unique and wonderful accompaniment.
Further readings/info:
DearCompanion.com – the album’s official site where you can also listen to a stream of the record
ILoveMountains.org – what Dear Companion is all about
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