#daniel bachman

The tracks are generally concise (only two exceed four minutes), but they blend together into a kind of suite. There is a satisfying balance among those that are fairly noisy, bordering on industrial (though not aggressive), such as “As I wander, I will ponder,” those that are more melodic and less dense, such as “Happy hearts that feel no pain,” and those in which the emphasis alternates between texture and melody, such as “On a summer over yonder.” Nearly always, a drone of some sort either provides the background or dominates, and the electronics or treated sounds sometimes create a rhythm, as on the closing track. The resulting blend of sweeter, more bucolic tones with shimmering and percussive electronics is initially disconcerting but comes to feel organic, like a kind of palimpsest.

It’s been fascinating to observe Bachman developing his approach to Americana from Takoma school guitar excursions to the very modern sounds featured on his recent recordings. His increasing attention to the overt symbols of roots music exemplified by his use of Carter Family material has coincided with increasing incorporation of technology and its artifacts (such as the recurring buzzes, hums, and rattles heard here). Whereas last year’s Almanac Behind used a similar approach to address the weighty, almost suffocating issue of climate change, the focus here is personal, on the cycle of death and rebirth that defines existence. This is, in other words, still serious music, yet it is not necessarily somber. Probably not coincidentally, When the Roses Come Again provides the perfect soundtrack for a drive through a land of woods, farms, and small towns dotted with Dollar General stores and cell towers.

For me, live music in 2023 was about quality over quantity. The two shows that affected me most this past year were aligned along the theme of reunion. I’ve been a fan of Yo La Tengo since high school but had strayed from the band’s past few releases. This Stupid World brought me back into their universe. I jumped at the chance to see them in Toronto; it had been decades since I last saw them play live. They played two sets, one soft and one loud, and they didn’t disappoint. As an added bonus, I got to meet fellow Dusted writer Ian Mathers at the show. Toronto post-rockers Do Make Say Think played their first show in six years in March, around my birthday. I wasn’t going to miss it. They unleashed an enticing set of music, playing material from across their entire catalog with intense energy. It was hypnotic and exhilarating. They were also jovial, joking about the current career prospects of the band members. It was a fun night.

Many perennial favorite groups and artists released excellent albums this year. Yo La Tengo returned to their early Matador form with This Stupid World, while The Clientele expanded into new, lush and uncanny territory on I’m Not There Anymore. Califone’s Villagers pushed the band’s adventurous, bluesy roots-rock into an experimental wonderland. Bill Orcutt released Jump On It, revealing his softer side. The Live in Brooklyn 2011 set from Sonic Youth found the group trying out songs they rarely played live, as they wound down their decades-long existence. Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society showed that they’re not done unleashing mesmerizing sonic salvos with Since Time is Gravity. Finally, Daniel Bachman continued to push his singular brand of Americana toward the outer limits with When the Roses Come Again, and Intercepted Message found Osees covering Cisco Systems’ telephone hold music. It was a good year for long-beloved institutions.

New to me this year was the band Famous Mammals and their polyglot post-punk album Instant Pop Expressionism Now! I returned to it time and time again; it was the soundtrack to my late summer and my autumn. Digging deeper into the San Francisco band’s origins, I discovered a previously hidden world of Bay Area post-punk, populated by a tight-knit scene that originated with The World, which would fracture into Famous Mammals, Non Plus Temps, Blues Lawyer, Children Maybe Later and others. The LP in question blends elements of Swell Maps, Young Marble Giants and Television Personalities, aligning with those outfits’ brashness, naivete, and wry sense of humor. It was at the top of my list in 2023 and led me to explore the SF underground further. That digging led me to Will York’s encyclopedic tome Who Cares Anyway? York gives an in-depth perspective to the goings on in the Bay Area from the post-hippie origins of its punk scene to the self-destructive chaos of Flipper and the visionary artistry behind acts such as Mr. Bungle, Caroliner, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, et cetera. He also investigates the unique personalities that comprised the scene such as Brandon Kearney, Gregg Turkington, Seymour Glass, Barbara Manning, and Joe Pop-o-Pie. The book is worth exploring if you’re at all interested in any of the names I mentioned.

I always highlight at least one Canadian release, and this year I really got into the self-titled debut from Toronto duo You Can Can. The pairing of sound artist Andrew Zukerman and vocalist Felicity Williams is the perfect comingling of the familiar and the otherworldly. Alien soundscapes intercept beautifully crafted song forms, with synth squiggles and abstract patterns writhing alongside folk music signifiers. Let’s hope that You Can Can have more music in store for us in 2024 and beyond.

The liner notes indicate that the title is both an anagram of the artist’s name and an invocation of his concern about climate change. Accordingly, there is an apparent progression through the elements of air, water and fire followed by an uneasy resolution at the end. Throughout, noise and voices share space with music in ways that are sometimes complementary and at others confrontational. 

The experience begins with a barely perceptible electronic drone to which static and dribbles of treated guitar gradually adhere on a track titled ominously “Barometric Cascade (Signal Collapse).” The effect is immediately disconcerting as the ear and mind struggle to render the sounds more familiar—the static like a cymbal, the liquid guitar tone like an organ, and so on. The track gives way abruptly to a few seconds of field recordings of the AI voice of National Weather Service recordings (which returns at key moments throughout the record) and then abruptly to another track of static that sounds like a helicopter. Like the glitchy image on the cover, the play of noise and signal suggest both the inadequacy of the human response to the forces that drive global heating and human responsibility for unleashing them. 

The calming tones of a banjo on the fourth track feel like a refuge, though one windswept by static and overtaken by the “Supercell” of the next track. The storm, the threat of it, and its aftermath haunt the middle of the record. “Flood Stage,” one of the longer tracks at just over five minutes, builds with a blend of what sounds like electronics, a sruti box or fiddle and/or more treated guitar that swells like the waters about which the disembodied Weather Service bot has warned. 

The context shifts abruptly just over halfway through the record, with water giving way to its opposite in the form of a “Wildfire” sparked by the sound of a match, and “Think Before You Breathe” then hints at what is at stake. “When the Worlds [sic] on Fire” features more disembodied voices and what sounds like a cross between the “This Land is Your Land” and the Carter Family tune “Little Darlin’ Pal of Mine” on slide that grinds to a halt over bells. 

“Daybreak (in the awful silence)” brings more calming banjo, presented bare without the static in a respite from the chaos represented by the field recordings. The track serves as a transition back to the status quo initiated by “Grid Reactivation” and “Five Old Messages” (including the grimly humorous “Did you guys get storms today?”) from which music is absent. The narrative arc resolves in the haunting and grimly lovely closer “Reactivation-Normalization,” on which gentle fingerpicking blends with other warbly, somewhat ominous guitar tones swathed in static that gradually fade together. 

Overall, Almanac Behind is perhaps the most successful of Bachman’s “noise records” (though, in point of fact, his interests in this regard trace back through 2016’s self-titled release to his earliest recordings as Sacred Harp). The use of shorter tracks than the epic-length statements on Axacan and Morning Star gives this album a lighter, or, at least, more user-friendly feel, and the integration of the music into the static, drones and voices feels more organic to the compositions. Bachman continues to create some of the most distinctive and intellectual music in the Takoma school idiom, and the breadth of his vision is well represented by the pair of recordings with which he has begun and ended 2022. The future as he sees it seems murky and frightening but starred with tiny moments of beauty and understanding. 

Jim Marks

This is not an unusual musical landscape in which to find this Virginia-based artist wandering of late. Morning Star, his 2018 release on Three Lobed, opened with a long suite that fed harmonium and fiddle drones into a pool of sound created by his 12-string guitar meanderings and the fuzz of an AM radio. And his 2012 cassette Tamun Shud found Bachman in a tug-of-war with drummer Ian McColm where both players fell in and out of focus. 

Axacan is, then, a continuation of those musical concepts with Bachman’s guitar receding further and further into the distance. Make no mistake, the instrument that he is most closely associated with remains a presence but the bulk of this album is taken up with soundscapes or experimental pieces. “Blue Ocean 0,” for example, is a stormy sea of clashing synth, harmonium, and fiddle overtones (all played by Bachman) with a background drone of what is apparently the sound of the wind blowing through a fishing line. Elsewhere,“Deep Adaptation” takes an already fuzzy field recording and what sounds like a piano and slows the tape way down. The resulting piece feels as if it is being emitted from miles below the earth’s crust. 

When Bachman does set the focus on the guitar, he emphasizes long strums and ringing tones rather than the fleet fingerpicking of some of his previous recordings. On “Year of the Rat,” he explores a single melody with the mind of a jazz improviser — speeding it up, slowing it down, starting the phrase and then quickly abandoning it for another idea. Or just quietly plucking out each note of the main chord to highlight the buzz of the steel strings. “Blues in the Anthropocene” wanes even further. Bachman’s gingerly played guitar passages are nearly subsumed throughout by static and insect chatter for nearly six minutes until a collage of field recordings pushes it aside completely. 

Bachman has reached an exciting stop along his musical evolution. He’s at that point where he keeps returning to the question “What’s next?” as a mantra. After mastering his instrument of choice, it’s a fair thing to ask. Bachman doesn’t try to answer that question on Axacan, but the music teases out a number of possibilities for this curious, restless artist to explore in the hopefully very near future.