unravel

I fell asleep last night listening to Samamidon’s most recent album, All Is Well.  Because these are traditional songs being reinterpreted by a contemporary artist, the music has the odd quality of sounding like nostalgia packaged into a commodity (you know, like “classic” Coke).  I don’t mean to criticize whatever sincere connection with these songs exists within Samamidon [just a dude, solo, with help from friends], but picking up the torch of these public domain relics creates a feeling of detachment in me.  And I don’t mean that I feel Amidon [that’s the dude’s name: Sam Amidon] is detached from his source material (he’s most certainly engaged, humbly and reverently)—it’s just that I was at first detached from the sentiment hiding in the whole project.

The eerie Appalachian sound of creaky folk, stripped of all manner of joy or pleasure, is what makes the music hard wrought and almost guttural.  But there’s a calmness to the earthly drudgery (which could describe both the lyrics and the music), kind of like stoic acceptance of one’s fate in the face of extreme poverty.  In such a perspective, Amidon’s flat and plaintive voice is the calmness, the spiritual core, at the heart of the music’s dreary and slow interaction with the world.  While he plucks an acoustic guitar as if it were a banjo (or, you know, actually plays a banjo), he gives a subtle twist to certain syllables (I picture him pushing the sound from the side of his mouth as the corner of his lips hook upward) and sounds like he reaching for redemption. 

Or not.  I can’t quite get my head around it, because Amidon’s voice isn’t expressive, really; but the effort is there, and it seems to contrast with how the music often has the weight of real life (even in “Wedding Dress,” where the spritely arrangement still feels grounded by the organic acoustics).  And that conflict in feel gives the songs texture.  Of course, the music stands on its own, with the wonderful touches in “Fall On My Knees” of fiddle droning away and washboard scratches sounding like chicken kicking through dust.  The song would be akin to a hoedown if Amidon didn’t lay over the monochrome vocals that bleach out the mood, making the song’s tone reliant on the atmospheric elements (again: fiddle, washboard, a smattering of percussion, and his burbling-creek banjo).

Elsewhere on the album is Amidon’s discreet use of strings; working with traditional material, he uses a light touch to embellish the simple repetition that is a cornerstone of folk (for example, no dramatic transitions into choruses).  To echo the natural progression of these songs, he provides (or, possibly, his friend Nico Muhly, a composer, provides…) strings arrangements that don’t so much evoke the original melody (as in, just coloring certain phrases or popping up to segue between verses) but rather carry the weight of evolving the song towards dawn, towards a conclusion vaster and more immersive than how the song began.  For example, when the strings enter on the song “Saro” at the 1:20 mark (they begin teasing at the 1:05 and 1:12 marks, too), they expand the meditative quality established by the beautiful horns-and-acoustic-guitar melody that had been the only counterpoint to the vocals until that point.  And I hope I’m not detracting from the simpler (yet equally rewarding) merits of those horns, which are gorgeous (like something by The Band: both mournful and searching). 

Still, these are strings that don’t soar, but rather scrape close to the horizon (this is true of not just “Saro,” but all the songs with strings); they create a human arc of regret and triumph, yet they sound like how an angle would disguise itself to slum it with the mortals—meaning, each dip and swell is graceful, and they add the uplifting sense that the hard-luck lives presented in the lyrics can at least take solace in having been ordained by some holy entity.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS