| All this is awfully
purple, I know; perhaps my initial resistance to instrumental music
has more to do with how difficult it is to write about the stuff.
I can describe the instrumentation (guitars, violins, keys) and I
can talk about the overall sound (recorded on an eight-track, it is
enriched by a less-than-full bottom end and a decidedly unorthodox
emphasis on the high-middle), but in the end there’s just this
thing that doesn’t explore scales, or find a theme and repeat
variations, or pay tribute to the great composers that came before
it. It just seethes, and rather darkly, too. Lineaments is
the latest in what is proving to be a very interesting, exquisitely
satisfying public journey by a guy named Steven R. Smith into the
heart of his muse. I think when he gets to the center of all this
he’s going to find himself at the axis of some pretty knotty
emotional terrain -- the track on this record called “Artesia”
is as spooky as the older, quieter songs on Einsturzende Neubauten
records, which generally speaking aren’t a bad indication of
where Smith is coming from -- and I think that’s terrific. Because
I can chill out to this stuff and then get up feeling like I just
watched three Dario Argento movies in a row. Which I would in fact
now do if it were not high time that I got myself some sleep. I will
see you next week. |