| What’s this, then? All week it’s been
percussion, percussion, percussion: the almost-total percussive
attack of the new Krisiun album, and Zaza’s tremendous
dance-pop placekeeper called Uncensor (which was originally scheduled
to be this week’s update); the ten-kinds-of-incredible
new disc from Portugal’s goth-metal saviors Moonspell,
and the constant lurking breathing shuffling unspeakable presence
of Kid Creole, Who is God Almighty. I am resplendent with drums,
and, like the rest of us as it seems, I like it that way. And
Hejira itself leads off with “Coyote,” which everyone
surely knows from The Last Waltz, where a stage-frightbitten
Mitchell performed it from behind the curtain: and this song
has a full drum kit, albeit a muted one. After that, though,
we are cut back to a strict diet of flourishes: and what happens?
The natural rhythms of the songs swell through like a pulse trying
to escape the artery. A cymbal here, some basic traps there:
but mainly it’s Jaco Pastorius on the bass and Mitchell’s
height-of-her-powers voice, spinning dark little webs. |
