Six Organs of Admittance: 10 vérités/contre-vérités (et autres trucs complètement subjectifs)

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Matt "MV" Valentine: Space Chanteys [Fringes; 2003]

Matt's voice and beautiful arrangements are perfect for easing out of any woozy, headache-laden morning. A totally gorgeous record that drips with rural and urban folk language. It also does not lend itself towards emotional plundering in one swoop. I have gone back to it all year and found new feelings, new vibrational consonance and new layers of warmth or coolness, depending on what I needed at the time. There's a whole group of amazing musicians on this one as well, from the otherworldly strings of Samara Lubelski to the struty drone of Erika Elder, which only sweetens the whole affair. Possibly the best overlooked record of the last few years.

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Jack Rose: Opium Musick [Eclipse; 2003]

Finally, somebody has something to say on the acoustic guitar that hasn't been said before. Jack's first LP was a great declaration of six-string adeptness, but this is the record that calls out all the acoustic guitar hacks, like myself, and spanks our collective open-tuned ass with a vision that has been lacking since JFK (that's John Fahey the King to you, brothers and sisters) left this world for peace at last. But the thing about Jack is that where most guitarists think it's enough to know the Takoma crew, Jack has drowned himself in real country-folk blues music. The first time I ever went to his house he was pulling out record after record of old dusty vinyl that crackled with the real deal. Anyway, if Jack makes an equal leap of greatness to his third solo LP as he did form his first to second, you can expect a few angels to be called from heaven for the choir. I can't see how they could refuse such a prayer.

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Christina Carter: Bastard Wing [Eclipse; 2003]

DO NOT put this record on for the first time at 3am trying to escape from the absurdity of the world. That was my mistake and I'll just go ahead and say it: from the first vocal emanation I cried all night long like a little baby getting his first tooth. Bastard Wing is gorgeous and NEEDED in this world. Think the heavy weeping of Gorecki's 3rd meets the healing spirituality of Alice Coltrane and you're almost there.

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Current 93: Hypnagogue [Pandurto; 2003]

David Tibet stands (and plays and laughs) pure like Jandek and Keiji Haino. His newer works have been slowly moving (like majestic glaciers, refracting light and hope into listeners' souls and straight up to heaven itself, saying, "All is love! We will make it through all this bullshit when we realize that. Have patience with us, we are still learning and it is our human nature to move towards love. We will be there one day!") into a whole new space that is not even informed by what we can call "music," "spoken word" or "poetry." It must be taken on its own terms. All words like "gothic," "dark" and "apocalyptic folk" melt and become meaningless in the face of real listening. But then again, we have forgotten how to truly listen anymore. Who told you how to listen when you were a child? Nobody? It was natural? That is the way to listen to Current 93.

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Jackson C. Frank: Blues Run The Game [Columbia; 1965, r. Mooncrest; 1996]

This is my favorite thing to come out in 2003. Hopefully one day some TV commercial will use Jackson's music so that the pop-music buying public will have another great piece of acoustic music they would have otherwise ignored (I'm talking about The Faces' “Ooh La La”, of course.) I'll just put it like this: when my friend Zach got this he put it on and started crying his eyes out all night long. I'm sure it had something to do with the maturity and resignation to a fucked world in Jackson's voice on the disc of newly discovered music. There's also the pictures of Jackson with his eye shot out, making you actually think for a second that maybe you should do something charitable and giving for once (nah! How am I gonna save up for that Herman Nitsch box set if I do that? ) Jesus, what's up with all the sad music on this list? Don't know. I could also write about how tonight I shook my ass to Lee Perry, danced around to Baby Huey, and sometimes I sing along with the Band. But who cares.

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Fursaxa: Fursaxa [Ecstatic Peace!; 2002]

Tara Burke should be (but probably isn't) known in every house that appreciates the likes of Nico, Scott Walker's Tilt, Grimm's fairy tales, Anne Briggs, Stone Breath and Sandy Denny. Her vision is swirling and narcotic. All this is built up through modern urban folk instruments, like Casios and electric guitars plugged into practice amps, that she strums silver chords with to pierce her drones, pregnant with collective consciousness. Plus, sometimes she sings in French and that always increases the fox quotient that is already pretty high. I know, I know; we're all supposed to deny our sexuality like a Victorian wife so I'll shut up right now before someone makes fun of me. Don't worry, I won't tell your mom you had dirty thoughts when you were collecting records and theorizing about the state of modern music. Good thing all those records have obligatory abstract "psychedelic" paintings on the cover. Just make sure you keep your Acid Mothers Temple picture disc under the bed, ok?

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Townes Van Zandt

Good old Townes. Greatest songwriter for the world. No fancy chords and no fancy language. It's clear what he's singing about and that's alright with me. It doesn't take any deconstruction or philosophical reading to understand that his music pulls together all human emotion into a simple, "it's ok." It's ok. Your wife left you and it's ok because you might marry again in a few years. Your friend died and it's ok, it's ok, 'cause we're all going to die and take comfort in the fact that your friend didn't have to watch you die. And you've been drinking too much, but it's ok, you gotta enjoy this life. But his music isn't all about the hurt in life. It's also about the things like playing poker and joining fraternities and just plain old living, which is OK with me too. It can be as complicated as you want it, or it can be very simple. Townes held it all and laughed hard and cried hard too. It's always been curious to me that on the Abnormal [live] record he can sing what I consider one of the saddest songs ever written, “Tecumseh Valley”, without a hitch and then he sings a song, “Old Shep”, which seems to me almost pandering to the easier side of pulling heartstrings, and he can't make it a few lines without bursting into tears. But maybe he's saying that it's OK to let it all flow, like Van Morisson's tears that flow and flow, and just let it go with a simple punch of a simple button so that we can get up again in the morning and be tough, and get through our day.

I feel sorry for people who are so critical that they have lost all sense of subtlety and easiness of living. It's easier to just be simple, admit you are scared and admit you don't know anything. I'll do it right now: I have no idea why Pitchfork asked me to write this bullshit. I am not a good writer and I don't think what I listen to is of much interest to anyone. I don't even believe everything I write. But I'm not about to deny an invitation. That's just rude. Which brings me back to Townes. He is not so rude as to write a song that you need to go to school to understand. He doesn't have to. I believe he was blessed and touched with the hand of inspiration, humanity and divine love. And I can't say that for 98% of the world.

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Van Morrison: Veedon Fleece [Mercury; 1974]

There are so many devastating moments on this record that to list only a few would be total injustice to the rest. But fuck it, what the fuck is just in this world? Well at least we can experience hope in one man's search for light. Right? So let's talk about the way Van ends “Linden Arden Stole The Highlights” with the line, "now he's living with a gun" and then starts up the very next song by throwing his voice way up on top of his vocal chords and letting it settle down to a calmer note while singing, "oh well it's lonely, when you're living with a gun." Ah, I'm not a good enough writer to explain how magical it is. You'll just have to trust me. Or we could talk about how it's a whiskey drinking record, an alchemical rumination, a journal of his post-divorce drive through the Irish countryside, or his most thoroughly William Blake influenced work ever (just look at his hair on the cover, for Christ's sake!).

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Richard Youngs: Sapphie [Jagjaguwar; 1999]

The first LP I got from Richard was with his cohort Simon Wickham-Smith and featured the deadliest ear-shattering electronic squall to ever to escape from a groove. He's been doing more acoustic oriented things of late and I see he has a new one coming out in a few months that I can't wait for. But this one - subtle, beautiful, without pretense and sad. If you put this record on and don't feel anything in your heart then you are a miserable, miserable creature. But why do you feel something in your heart? I think it has something to do with frailty. I'm sick of hearing all practice, no heart. On Sapphie, Richard Youngs sounds like he was kissed by his muse the same night he recorded all the music. He just picked up his guitar and played and sang. Sapphie is a map of the heart, sorrow and humanity rather than a good example of how to play the guitar or how to solve the world's problems. In essence, it is an absolute masterpiece and ranks among the greatest works of passion that the world has ever known, in my very uneducated opinion.

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Ghost: Hypnotic Underworld [Drag City; 2004]

With the exception of Hiroyuki Usui, Ghost make the most emotional and heartfelt music out of any psychedelic notions that I have ever heard. I hate to set up a hierarchical status like that because I love so much music out there from a lot of modern day artists, but Ghost really are the masters of the genre. I don't think anyone can deny that. Anyway, the new record is breathtaking. It's more like a continent to explore than a record to listen to. It probably took them 5 years to get a new record out because they were crafting the thing for that long, going in and adjusting the notes to the heavens day by day (if you believe in that sort of thing). The fact that Ghost doesn't write the same song 400 times raises them high above the rest of us. Singer Masaki Batoh's two EPs are lost gems as well. You would do well to search them out if you are looking for absolute joy.

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Leonard Cohen: “Chelsea Hotel”

The first four lines of this song tie the banality of the human condition together with eroticism so beautifully that they make sweeping the kitchen to surprise my girlfriend seem like an all-weekend orgy. Pretty incredible.

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Charalambides

I've always followed in the wake of sonic possibilities that the Charalambides have slashed open. They are continuously creating an extensive bridge that ties together the supraconsciousness of higher musical endeavors with the social aspect of folk forms (and then I come bumbling along down the bridge they built to get a view of the gorgeous canyon and river below, but I can rarely make it to the other side). The three people who make up the Charalambides - Heather, Tom and Christina, are each among the greatest of all forward looking artists in their own way. The fact that they make music together is a hint that maybe God has a bit of a smile when He joins people together to create joy in this world.