April 28, 2008

Something Hot and Dry as an Antidote to This Wet Cold Spring

It’s spring again… if you define Spring as a 44° degree day with cold rain soaking litter into the neighborhood and you have to heat the apartment with the oven because you turned off your heater two weeks ago on a chance 69° degree day.

It used to be that in San Francisco I complained because the weather never really ventured outside the limited scale of 50-68°. Now these temperatures seem tropical to me.

My boyfriend made a resolution a few weeks back that he would never ever discuss the weather again, because to him it’s an easy conversational cop-out. Weather gets discussed out here a lot more than in California… BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING INSANE! What is this? There are tulips outside and prospects of an overnight low of 32°. Woe to the person who planted something that might be killed by a frost.

But yes… here I am… discussing the weather with you. For me the weather dictates my internal state… or perhaps it’s more like a catalyst, it stirs certain chemicals in my internal state that result in (sometimes) new states of being.

For the last few weeks I’ve had these strange cravings for the southwest and my imaginings of the wild wild west. Then I remembered, that for several years, spring time was when I took off for a few weeks to drive through the southwest.

Yesterday, in my craving for hot dry twang, sun-bleached wood, parched air and a blistering silence punctuated only by the skitter of rattlesnakes, I searched on emusic for some music that would satisfy just a little bit of that craving.

I came across two delights.

 

 Brokeback: Running Scared [2:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

 

 Valley of the Giants: Waiting to Catch a Bullet [10:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

One: Brokeback. I discovered a later album, “Looks at the Bird” sometime last year and decided to go back for more… this time for a three track album that is thoughtful and innocuous. I mean this in the very best sense of the word. I sometimes need noise that does not draw me out of my thoughts, but provides just a colorful enough background to my current activities. It’s like mood-lighting. There are any number of noise distractions in my neighborhood that bear a necessity to be drowned out, but black-metal isn’t always the answer. Brokeback has a very thoughtful bass, probably something that resembles a guitar run through some effects and some other sounds that might be created by stringed instruments, such as a pedal-steel guitar, but I can’t be sure. There is definitely a satisfying amount of empty space interspersed by the faint rumble of a drum that simulates a far away approaching storm.

Two: Valley of the Giants
This is indeed a self-aggrandizing name to give to a supergroup… the members of whom also apparently belong to a bunch of other important Indie Rock bands. Since I have the pleasure of ignorance, I can only judge them on their current sound.

Anyone who uses an image of of Cathedral valley as their cover art is risking extreme scrutiny in my book. It’s almost hubris. It would be like a politician using Jesus as a mascot. To me, such landscape is holy land, meant to be preserved, appreciated and regarded with the awe it truly deserves.

The title of the album: “Morse Code In The Modern Age: Across The Americas” could easily be truncated to simply, “Across the Americas” because that’s the documentary that could accompany this blissful soundtrack.

I’ve only played the whole album through one or two times, but a few tracks are a meandering journey through an abandoned mining town, which is enough to satisfy me. There are other themes, other landscapes that seem to be evoked, making this indeed an interesting journey across America, and not just an abandoned roadtrip that expires in Death Valley through the fault of poor planning.