Via Chicago by Wilco

Via Chicago is a track on the Summerteeth album, released in 1999. 

This was the first Wilco album I ever heard and I was really interested in the variety of the material, the different shades, the range of styles, from country to power pop to something a wee bit avant garde. What really hit home were Jeff Tweedy's lyrics and Via Chicago's is the most stunning of all.

The track is essentially an simple acoustic track with quite sombre and muted electronic sounds grafted onto it.  It is ordinary until the singing starts:  Over strummed guitar chords, bass and snare Tweedy sings:

I dreamed about killing you again last night
And it felt alright to me
Dying on the banks of Embarcadero skies
I sat and watched you bleed
Buried you alive in a fireworks dispaly
Raining down on me
Your cold, hot blood ran away from me
To the sea.

There is tension, mystery, fear.  The narrative is both surreal and routine, delivered in a downbeat drawl.  As the song progresses it is fleshed out with synthesizer tones and whistles and arhythmic drumming.  But the whole performance is restrained, reined in, maybe a bit polite.

The last lines of the verse before the final chorus summarise this feeling:

Rest my head on a pilllowy strat
and a cracked door moon
Says I haven't gone too far.

The version of the song on the Kicking Televison album, recorded live in May 2005 showcases the changes in approach.  Via Chicago starts as a country ballad, with pedal steel touches by Nels Cline, before diving into a white-noise-wig-out led by Glenn Kotche's clashing drum solo in the middle of the later verses.  It is a music of contrasts; the band turns on a dime, loud / silent, plain / complex, soft / hard, supportibve / destructive.  In live shows these contrasts are emphasised by volume and the band's often brutal light shows, as witnessed in the Ashes of American Flags DVD in 2009.

Sunmerteeth seems to me to be the start of the end of the initial stage in the band's development.  By Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the band would change totally, becoming Jeff Tweedy's vehicle in essence and actuality.  The film, I am trying to break your heart by Sam Jones shows the shift graphically as drummer Ken Coomer is immediately absent and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennet is shown the door.  The current band revolves around Jeff Tweedy with John Stirratt on bass the sole survivor of the original band, supported by great players - Glenn Kotche, Mikael Jorgensen, Pat Sansone and Nels Cline.

There is no definite version of Via Chicago - it is changing and adapting through time, in every performance. The initial idea is still at the centre of the song but it is evolving, growing different limbs, experiencing different moods, expanding to fill a space in a concert hall, contracting to spread through my headphones.  Whatever it is,  when you hear it you will know it.

Family Life by The Blue Nile

Everything about The Blue Nile tales a bit of time.
In the early 1980s I worked in an office in Glasgow city centre and a work mate gave me a taped copy of the band's first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops.  It was strange and wonderful; slabs of electronic sounds, graced with heart-rending vocals, accurately describing my city in both abstract and real emotional terms that I hadn't considered ; a new novel combination of elements that touched me, resonated inside, made me look at the city in a new, refreshing light.  The Blue Nile are a Glasgow band and I took them into my heart.  They are Paul Buchanan, Robert Bell, and Paul Joseph Moore.

I remember going to see them in their first tour, at the Royal Concert Hall and I don't know who was more nervous, the band or the audience.  But when they started to play there was a shared feeliing of joy and relief - they could play, he could sing, it really was that good!

Family Life from the Peace at Last album.  It is the band's third album, released in 1996, a mere thirteen years from the first one, seven years after Hats.  Peace at Last, to me, turns the Blue Nile soundscape upside down, featuring realistic, natural sounds rather than their signature synths.  The step back to tradition makes a leap forward possible.  It sounds simpler, more conventional, more powerful.

Family Life is anchored by piano, acting as both chordal backing and melodic lead, with strings and a solo trumpet adding colour and mood.  Paul Buchanan's vocal is melancholic, sad, pathetic and strident all at the same time.  This is stately music, it describes a human condition.   It is delicate, fragile, precise.  It is praise, a prayer, a plea for forgiveness.  It progresses so slowly; sometimes it seems to freeze, to stop.  It can't get slower... then it does.

To me the song is about isolation, loneliness, love, loss.
It is Christmas Eve; snow is falling; a man watches the city skyline. He is alone.  His family is elsewhere, his wife is with another husband, his children with a new father.
It starts with a piano chord and then:
Starlight, do you know me?
Please, don't look at me now
I'm falling apart
Silver on the window
Like the bike I once had
At home in the yard
Jesus, love let me down
And I know where You are

Tears form when I hear:
Tomorrow will be Christmas
We'll be singing old songs
And light up the tree
God and all the mercy
And say all your prayers
For little old me

After the musical climax, we arrive at the intimate and ultimate conclusion:
Jesus, I go to sleep and I pray
For my kids, for my wife, family life.

The final notes in the piano promise hope and happiness.  Maybe

On God's Rocky Shore by Cahalen West & Eli West

Cahalen West & Eli West are a couple of young guys from Seattle in the USA and they made a great album called The Holy Coming of the Storm.  On God's Rocky Shore is the second track on the album and, as it contains the words of the title in the chorus, I suppose it is the title track.  The whole album is exceptional, a quiet and considered collection of quality tunes and songs, but I think On God's Rocky Shore  is excellent.

The song is under 3 minutes but is a sublime mix of soulful vocal harmonies and old-timey instrumentation [including banjo clicks].  The resulting combination of a sparce and skilled musical setting and biblical and folky lyrics easily exceeds the components.  The song bounces along on waves of "proper" musicianship and playing, each part both balanced and complimented by all the others.

It's old fashioned music, it's rural music, it's important music.  It is a recent favourite but one due to last. 
It is beauty and truth.

The boys will be here soon - they play at the Crofthead Concerts on 19th November - catch them if you can.

Here's their website: http://cahalenandeli.com/

Here's our website at Crofthead Concerts: http://www.croftheadconcerts.co.uk/


HbM

How it starts.

How it starts

I was talking to a friend about a favourite group [which happens to be Cahalen Morrison and Eli West] and he said that he had recommended the band's music to a colleague.  After a while the colleague contacted him and when asked how he liked the band he replied - their music is haunting me.

I knew the feeling. 
I play music and there are some tunes which I hear I have to learn how to play, to hear it my way, to alter it, live it, feel it.
I hear music and I have to track it down and acquire it - I need to be able to play it as required.

This isn't a new thing and the music covers a massive range of artists, genres and styles; the range of emotions the music triggers is as wide but always immediate and deep.

This blog, this thing, is an attempt to explain what I mean.  I know it's supposed to be difficult to describe music in words but words are all I have.

HbM

Music that haunts me.
On God's Rocky Shore by Cahalen Morrison and Eli West
Family Life by Blue Nile
Hollow Point by Chris Wood
Michaelswood by Catriona McKay & Chris Stout
I think everything's going to turn out fine by Ry Cooder