Search - Various Artists :: Other Songs & Dances, Vol. 1

Other Songs and Dances Vol 1 was worth the wait

E.L. Field | Fresno, California | 05/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Each record deserves to be heard in an empty space, each voice, each instrument, every thought that someone is trying to convey has to be listened to with bare wood walls, no distractions and proper lighting. Hard to do.



`Other Songs and Dances Vol. 1' came in the mail a day or so ago, I'm currently painting and rebuilding an apartment,

-We're talking ripped out flooring, enough OilBased Kilz laid down to seal Old Testament quality sins, and a kitchen that has seen it's fair share of grease fires.

This week, it's just the happy scent of latex off-white going onto the cabinets.

The apartment overlooks an old elementary school, (now part abandoned, part insurance office,) off across the street are two flags, just large enough to be prominent on the horizon, just small enough to be almost part of the landscape of trees and a pale blue sky. Old Glory and the State of California wave lazily, part Norman Rockwell, part David Lynch.



Near dusk, it's completely empty, and I decide, well, my fav Dave Brubeck Album has paint splatters on it (a Saturday when my dad visited when I was a little boy, we painted my room,)

-May as well as take the risk of a few drips on Pete and Steves project...

The sun was setting the room was going golden:



1.) Jeff Dueck: Better Days

I've had the honor and pleasure of being in at least two chapels back at (our) old college, when Jeff led worship. These days they have whole majors in such things, -and to be honest, nobody will be able to teach what this guy does.

If you are in a room with Jeff, and he's near a piano, you are about to have areas of your heart and soul touched and changed forever.

After years of `worship tunes,' overload, I am pretty jaded.

Jeff, however has taken the intimacy of one guy pouring his heart out while playing, turns it to ministry for the rest of us, manages to stop everything, including the ability, and need to breathe,

--and all you do is sit and watch dust particles shimmer and spark in the shafts of light.

Real piano music is transcendent.

Jeff is conductor, ride, and guardrail.

If a movie is ever made about my life, Jeff is the only one who has the rights to write music during the sad parts, or the part where the guy sits with a Bible and reads, or walks anywhere when leaves are falling. (He's one of the few people who can smile at you during inclement weather, and you'll think it's a beautiful day.)



2.) Duncan Sheik: A Purple Trail

This is the elder statesman of the crew, this guy is the `anchor' store that the mall is built around... This is the heavyweight.

I've never met Duncan Sheik, but you know what?

I think by the sounds of this piece that he's a decent guy. I mean, I know he's the most famous of the lot, but to be honest, his piece is not gaudy, it's not bombastic, it's beautiful, and has spectacular strings and harmonies (I have always thought that if Jonatha Brook was to write as a guy, we'd get Duncan Sheik.)

I've always loved his work, this is such a beautiful and approachable piece, gorgeously sad, and really fits and plays with the rest of the class nicely. Duncan's work will always be invited back. People who create stuff like this, when mentioned in conversation, stop and say, `..he's good people.'

Things you can only say to Duncan Sheik:

Dude... this song is beautiful, It's something Elvis Costello wishes he could pull off, but you did it first.

-My advice, wait for him to beg you for it and get a bundle to let him do a cover, ---better yet, hold out, and wait for his wife, to do a Jazz version. You will be elected to god status. Very-very cool piece.



3.) Allie Moss: Way With Words

You see, I've met Allie, way back in the day, and was impressed when she single handedly shut down a heckler at a Secret Agent Abe concert by looking right at the guy, mid song, and said earnestly `...thank you sir.' -Which leveled the room, and shut him down like a cement retaining wall, (he loved it, we loved it, and the band plowed on....)

-This from a very petite woman, who can stop a train with a look, -not easy to do.

The track opens with a hissing sort of percussion that for me was taken by Trent Reznor by a song decidedly less innocent.

All of that has changed with Allie's use of this sound...

The truth of the matter is, she could sing a Chinese menu and make it stick with you, Her sound is so casual, and yet so clear.

When the brilliant and commoner, small children singing to themselves while playing, and the severely old, (who can only go anywhere anymore, in memory,) dream music, Allie's voice is what you hear.

Birds cannot sound this good.



4.) Peter Field: City Lights

My little brother has always sounded like an angel. It's okay to say this, we're both grown men, but it takes some explaining. You see, angels are always usually seen as feminine, (well, unless we're talking Rickman in Dogma, but I digress,) Peter has always sung with purity. (It's nice that he's sitting next to Allie, and not far from Jeff in the line-up.)

I've never heard him so strong. The piece is cohesive and shimmers. The angel part comes in, where you just know that in heaven, this is how people sound, positive, warm, loving, optimistic, and not the least bit insincere. Peter has always sounded like this, because this is how he is in purest form.

It's an excellent, happy piece that is kind of like driving into the sun on a horizon, without having to worry about running into anything. Being his big brother, dark and melancholic in nature, I've always teased him about being so upbeat, (all the while coveting his disposition.) Good wins, Peter is happy, he's walking with Lisa, it's a lovely night, and even I'm smiling. Job well done.



5.) Vesper: Saigon Grill with a Kid

I've not heard Vesper in years. Her voice and this song is one of the most markedly changed sounds, of the collection (...and she was good before, trust me, very-very good.)

This is tasting a dark food, from a ghost story that is wonderful, familiar, and oddly haunted with spices. This girl knows the hills and shadows of our common counties.

I hear this, and I'm thinking: Shirelles `Soldier Boy,' but only, it's not Vietnam, it's the Civil War.

It's deeper, calling not from the rafters (where the organ drifts down,) but coming straight at you. Vesper's like that.

Some singers do these fluttering aerial displays like barn swallows.

Vesper flies slowly at eye level, she glides in dark lovely notes with owls and ravens. I can smell the woods and the water when she sings, she has a very honest, full, and gutsy sound.

She is folklore.

God I love her singing.

There is a song by Josh Ritter `Girl in the War,' I'm in love with, that this could be a companion piece to, and I swear to Bela Fleck, I'm hearing temple bells (big deep ones,) under it all in the end.

This is the fourth siren from `O Brother Where Art Thou.'

-Her voice will cradle you.



6.) Matt Singer: Lover

There are those times when you and your significant other (...well, in this case, my girlfriend and I,) are away from each other...

It's all good, things are cool, (...she just called to say goodnight...)

-she's just chilling at home, doing some laundry, hanging with Mom, her dogs and cats, and all...

-but you find yourself alone, some evening, walking around the house, reminded of her, missing her, dimly lit, kind of lonely, but glad for that loneliness.

You need a song to both define and be created by being alone, and the need to think about such things, er, um, people... (maybe it's a guy thing...)

(-lines like: `takes a breath and breathes life into me, thousand miles away, and I can barely see, -and I've held her breath inside me for about a year, and I choke sometimes but within these lines I'm without a fear... )

-Damn.. this guy is good... And whoever she is, he's totally Blessed.



7.) John Bonaventura: Lullaby

John Bonaventura is a guitar wielding level 5 mutant, (sorry, Just saw 'X3'.)

-Only thing, you know, if he had the choice of delivering Jane, or ending her, --he'd figure out how to save her... (unlike Wolverine, -no disrespect, but I'm telling you, Bonaventura could have done it.)

Quiet on the surface, -spectacular panoramas within, (I was a huge Swiss Auto Club Fan from the moment Pete played me the EP last year, actually further back from Jesters 'Living Room' R.I.P.)

So many spectacular shimmering layers of sound, he's a lost city,

Roger Dean completely illustrated this man's soul, and God made it better.

Some day, we will find out he actually started YES, Genesis, or ELP, (Not to mention Queensryche or Metallica) -but had to leave because he was too young and had to complete the 4th grade.

-From such a wide pool of influences, Bona proves that not all that is metal and shines need be evil or Petra.

Proof of genius: listen to `At the end of the Day,' -SmallCreeps Day, (Michael Rutherford,)

Rutherford's work was released in '80, I doubt John's ever heard the track, (as it's so obscure.) The kid was probably still on a big-wheel in his driveway when the record was either being hunted by collectors (or relegated to cut out bins,)

--and yet Bonaventura's work and Rutherfords are cut from the same mossy bank...

He's like the little kid in Matrix who bends the spoon just for the fun of it.

-Prog Rock is not dead, it's just younger, more intelligent, and reincarnated in an Italian gentleman who was raised not far off of Rt. 22 in central `Jersey.

(So, without further delay, from the people who have brought you the Ducati, DaVinci, and the woman who played the Merovingian's wife: (Make more music, John, please.)



8.) Annie Quick: Rest in the Houses

I have long felt this, and am now finally convinced.

Without making the poor girl feel that she's on an even taller pedestal:

There are parts of the Bible that we don't talk of much.

There are parts that are written that the Protestants avoid, --because they focus on great women, and focus upon their lives, struggles, triumphs, and how they changed the way the world will be forever.

Judith, Mary (any of the Mary's,) Martha, Tabetha, Esther, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth, -any of the prophets sisters or moms, St. Peter's wife...

-Pick any of these who would be forever lost, save the Holy Spirit whispering, showing us, -what women really are, and how they are such amazing faithful renditions of God.

-They all had voices, -all sung songs, all had thoughts.

If they all had IPods, and record players, ,,, shared with us what they were listening and singing to, (be it in car, kitchen, temple, while alone,)

-It would be something by Annie Quick.



-Pick any significant part of any movie that has touched you in the last ten years.

-Pick any faded polaroid, any old post card, any distant scene in your mind, that you need to remember, but just cannot, -find the thing in an abandoned house, and get stuck on what was going on, -and who was there, become lost in the question `why?'

-play Annie's songs, and you will be fine...

-Someday,(hopefully, this is a long, long way off,) Annie won't record or sing anymore.

Maybe someone will stumble across her tracks, and she'll touch off a whole movement and significant force that will affect others, like Georgia O'Keefe, Virginia Woolfe, Emily Dickenson, -or Carol Brady...

Perhaps God is shielding her, from the crush of such responsibility and adoration, (such things change people, she and Jad deserve quite lives.)

-Maybe fame and fortune will find her, I dunno. God handles these things, and He's far smarter than I.

I'm just glad that she records, and am glad that she's on this album.



9.) Holler Wild Rose: Victory Shine

Once there was a band called RadioHead, and the world changed.

Some picked up the form and ran with it.

(RadioHead themselves sure as hell didn't..)

Being somewhat well versed in the form, I listened to this, heard a track a while ago, and decided to dive in and have a few laps.

Holler is to RadioHead as Gavin Breyars is to Phillip Glass.

You need to know this.

It's a similar genre,

-but where you think you hear something familiar you are drawn to strange rhythms,

a vocalist who sometimes sounds like a Berlin Cabaret singer, and these wonderful faint moods held in smaller voices with `Tangerine Dream,' electronics.

Truth of the matter is, `Head is not this advanced. (sorry.)

Those used to a grey haze and the semi-nodding acrid fog, (only to find thin smoke and mirrors,) can, this time, go as deep as they wish...

This is more Eno and Bowie, had they continued on earlier trails.

Holler keeps rolling where you thought the others went, -but never did.

-and that's what makes them BETTER.

I admit, it sort of sounds and echoes like wandering a playground for three-year old picts, druids, and celts, -maybe it's just something Tolkein or Lewis romped in every day to decompress, and is spiritually quite safe.

(I've played the CD backwards and the gargoyles in my living room are still cement and have not eaten my cats.)

This is not a song, it's a portal.

It's alive and from somewhere else, but it's a somewhere that that has managed to live and progress on a traffic median, or a road that was forgotten by the Army Corps of Engineers and cartographers.

You'll still want to try to figure it out.

Of course something will be lost in the translation, and you'll write me and say `...you've got it all wrong, --they are actually _____.'

-but that's the beauty of discovery, and all transfiguration is highly personal.

I think I understand what Pete meant about these guys.



10.) Ian McGlynn: Catharsis

By time this track was playing, I was on my side, on a dirty floor, painting the base of an old cabinet. Light was fading, air was warm, -the `BeachBoys,' harmonies kicked in, and then stretched back to one voice over a piano.

-This song made me cry.

I can't explain it, it was just tears rolling down,,, then the piano and then Mr. McGlynn suddenly faded back to silence.

I couldn't figure it out. (Which is unusual for me.)

I still don't know what goes on.

We go from a quiet rolling series of notes, --then such gorgeous sunny harmonies, and back to stillness and emptiness. (I was hit like this by Dave Mathew's `Warehouse,' but in a far less personal way.)

Lying there, in an empty old kitchen, painting over someone's old life,,,

The song captures an aspect that some will never have to know.

Stare at nothing, at an open space, and think, `wow, -desolate.'

-but, instead, Stare at what used to be something, used to be a room full of warmth and welcoming faces, full of meaning and purpose, energy and movement,

-then tear it down, let everybody drive away, -leaving just the empty scene, -no signs of what you experienced,

--Maybe just a damp calendar with a date circled,

-no explanation.

-That's no longer desolate, lonely, or sad -That's devastating.

-This is not a song that you want to end.



11.) Matt Hopper: Absentee

Absentee is a ghost song.

It's not about a ghost, it's by a ghost.

It is a ghost.

It's right up there with `No Quarter,' by Led Zepplin

This is the image of Matt Hopper that you see on a rainswept street.

He's staring, singing, and calling -part to warn, part to comfort.

This ghost is built of snow, but has thawed, -and outside the temperature is dropping.

Listen to Matt's other works... (... this guy is going places, lemme tell ya, He is a party in a freakin' can...)

I have one of his songs on tape, (I think sung by a girl's perspective, where she's saying `..looking for one good man, and you might be him..')

-and I sing it in my truck, sometimes at stoplights, sometimes out loud, (very loud,) and other guys in trucks sometimes hear me, singing out loud, -presumably to anybody, -or possibly to them... (awkward.)

---But this is not that Matt.

This is not the happy-happy joy-joy Matt.

-Nope, this Matt stands there, transparent, barely discernable in the darkness, he's half- real, half in our heads.

This Matt might be the hum of high-tension wires,

-or the voice of one who drowned, and calls you through the housepipes and puddles, echoing through downspouts,

-you see eyes reflected in the watersheets rolling down your kitchen window, but they're not yours,

-keep telling yourself it's just the sound of the rain.



12.) Jeff Dueck: Michael Remembers

This time, just playing.

What sunlight on a chipped-paint window sill would sound like.

George Winston gave us ideas and brief sketches,

-Dueck is the lake that Winston was looking at.

Dueck is Muse.

(...and, from what Steve tells me, Dueck has his own muse, ---congrats on the wife, bro, by the sounds of your playing, she must be quite a girl.)



So,

Jeff takes us out,

Jeff rolls the credits, then fades us to black.

Jeff lets us think a minute about what we've just heard before we get up and go.

Jeff is the last thing we see, before we have to go back into the harsh sunlight.

Jeff lives here, in this,

-He will always be found here, and I will always see him on stage at Pardington, hear the crunch of leaves, and smell smoke in the air.

(You see, I've been raised by a piano player, who made sense of a world war, a police action, and seventy years of New Jersey and flight, -all by way of piano, -Dad is cool...I know from piano playing. -I don't suffer fools.)

-Believe me when I tell you, if you want piano,

Jeff's your man.



All these people, -you think you know folks.

This is not just a compiled CD, it's a series of deeply personal religious events. These are tiny diaries.

It's the forms, come down from the cave, and they live, breathe, and sit on a fence, one next to the other,

-you can touch them, and they definitely will touch you.



Pete, Steve

Good Album. (Take a Bow)

Job well done.



When's Vol. 2 coming?



-Love Always,

Eric"

The Perfect Soundtrack for a Summer Evening

Charles Beach | New York | 07/04/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The first release from Backlight Records has the feel of a movie soundtrack--a movie set in the small nightclubs in Greenwich Village, or on narrow Manhattan streets on a summer evening. The songs rely more on keyboard (or acoustic guitar) and voice than on other instruments, and many of the arrangements are minimalist. But the passion and feeling that can be evoked here is stirring, as it creates an atmosphere as much as a musical milieu. The closest comparison perhaps is the soundtrack to The Million Dollar Hotel, a 2000 film by Wim Wenders on which U2, Daniel Lanois, and others collaborated. The chief difference between the CDs is that Other Songs and Dances, Volume One, was actually recorded by musicians from the NYC metro area--musicians who, by living and by playing music here, understand firsthand the feel of the place whose atmosphere they seek to capture in these songs.



The CD begins with "Better Days," a quiet piano-vocal composition by Jeff Dueck. (He also closes the CD with an instrumental track.) That's followed by alternative favorite Duncan Sheik with acoustic guitar on "A Purple Trail." Other highlights include Peter Field's "City Lights" (with its obvious lyrical allusions to U2), Matt Singer's "Lover," John Bonaventura's "Lullaby," and Ian McGlynn's "Catharsis."



Female vocalists also make their presence felt on the CD, and their songs are among the more memorable. Allie Moss does a stirring, sultry turn on "Way With Words," and Vesper harmonizes gracefully on "Saigon Grill With Kid." Rocker Annie Quick translates a Rainer Maria Rilke poem into a haunting ballad in "Rest in the Houses."



What is perhaps most impressive about this CD is that most of these musicians are best known for playing and recording some intense rock'n'roll. Annie Quick (formerly of Stickman Jones), Allie Moss (ex-vocalist of Secret Agent Abe and Chasing the Rain), John Bonaventura (formerly of Swiss Auto Club), Ian McGlynn, and Peter Field (of Sky Burning Blue, Leisure, and Fool the Dancer) can rock the house any day of the week. To see them showing a quieter, more introspective side is a nice change of pace. Especially on a sultry summer evening.

"

OS&D Review

John Mcarthur | 06/14/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"OK so here it is. In my book, it just doesnt get any better than this! By "it" I mean a compilation CD you won't need an iPod for because every track is a must-listen; a CD that's not just telling a story but is more than likely telling your story; a CD that goes way beyond setting a mood but sustaining it with artists who, like Mark Twain, Byatt, Coelho or whoever your favourite storyteller might be, take you from first note to last, first word to last, on a really terrific journey.

The packaging is slick, graphics too cool for words and I can't recommend this CD enough! Listening is believing so give it a try. You won't be disappointed."