If you’ve been waiting for it, here it is. I Dreamed a Dream is the breezy, happy-go-lucky Tim Foljahn album. That is, of course, a relative thing. Foljahn’s dank, echoey baritone is congenitally incapable of anything north of wary sarcasm (and occasionally he dips lower, into a funereal croak). His words, as always, tussle with death, aging, meaninglessness and failure. All that is stipulated, but, but, but…can it be that this album is kind of a bop?
Consider, for instance, “Lowdown Day,” which, as you can imagine, is lyrically kind of a bummer, full of stoic resolutions not to let the bastards get you down. And yet, listen to the way the guitar gambols and frolics, dancing a two-step atop Foljahn’s existential angst. The same dynamic is at play in “Remember Me,” which asks a lover to not forget their passion even when both parties are past the point where they can do much about it. (“Remember me my love, when you are old and grey, when you are no longer young, and I am in my grave,” for instance.) But, instrumentally, the song isn’t a bit discouraged. It hammers on propulsively in a middle-distance distance groove, with a radiant bit of kosmiche guitar solo tucked into its steady progress.
Foljahn, whose Two Dollar Guitar songs tended to be long, glacially paced and radiantly, gorgeously downbeat, here is in a feisty mood. He breaks out the smouldery blues vamps for “Ghost Ripper” and “Wake Up!” (motherfucker). He convenes a modest baroque chamber orchestra for “Once.” He trills a set of giddy “lie lie la lies” in jangly “I Can’t Decide.” His band—as on previous albums that’s Jeremy Wilms on bass and Brian Kantor on drums with Christina Rosenvinge turning up for some backing vocals—keeps him on a lighter, bubblier vibe, even when the lyrics turn towards darker material. Moreover, his years in the game show in how very well these songs are put together. They are deftly arranged but full of space, idiosyncratic but never self-absorbed. Maturity in music criticism is often shorthand for slower, sadder, death haunted material. This is something richer, a joy that kicks up even in the downbeat intervals and a skill that gets it across.
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Tim Foljahn’s solo records have always been inward looking. They’re sparsely set, late night interior monologues intoned in an echoey baritone that pretty much defines the sound of being alone.
His latest solo album, Fucking Love Songs, is out now on Kiam Records. With a beautifully layered, dense, full-band sound that amplifies Foljahn’s evocative songs, you can listen to Legendswith its…
A couple of days ago I put on a record that John Moloney gave me when Chelsea Light Moving joined Sharon Van Etten at Town Hall a year ago called Caught on Tape by Thurston Moore / John Moloney and released by the amazing label/record store Feeding Tube Records in beautiful Northampton, Massachusetts. It's live recordings taped to cassette of John and Thurston playing what I am assuming are improvised sets with just electric guitar and drums in Europe in 2012. I put it on while working on the insert for my new record and listened through the whole record twice. It's a great record. The cover art for that record is by Raymond Pettibon so it's pretty amazing, too.
It turns out that was just a precursor for me to delve deep back into Sonic Youth and Sonic Youth affiliated records. After listening to The Washing Machine record this morning, I pulled out Psychic Hearts which is, if I'm not mistaken, Thurston Moore's debut record under his own name. It was originally released in 1995 as a three sided LP with the 4th side being an etching by Rita Ackerman that appears to have been done originally on vinyl as well. It honestly looks like she hand etched each one, pretty bad ass looking. It was reissued not too long with outtakes on side 4, but I haven't heard that version.
Anyway, I'd forgotten how much I love this record. Steve Shelley is playing drums and Tim Foljahn (of Two Dollar Guitar and now solo fame) plays second guitar and Thurston plays guitar and bass. It's a really cool kind of noisy record that touches on all things Thurston Moore. It has guitar noise, strange tunings, pretty mellow strums and random answering machine snippets and hints of the acoustic vibe he took further on later solo records.
In the way he presented it originally, it's almost like two separate records. Sides one and two are on clear green vinyl and have shorter more structured feeling songs. Also, all of the liner notes internal artwork are on the sleeve for record one. Then sides three and four are on black vinyl wrapped in a simple unprinted black sleeve. Side four is an etching as mentioned previously, but side three is a twenty minute stretch out of instrumental amazingness called Elegy For All the Dead Rock Stars that must have been a blast to record. It's mellow, it's explosive, it's droney, it's controlled feedback, it's great.
This is getting longer than it should be. That's what I'm listening to and it's amazing, highly recommended.
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"i thought i'd dissolve when the beacon revolved/ i just get so carried away.."
playlist:
palace songs - christmastime in the mountains (hope ep)
said the shark - december (always prattling on about wolves)
tim foljahn - carried away (television/ tom verlaine) (the rube goldberg variations)
daniel korha - pretty little pink (folk blues styling)
richard buckner - boys, the night will bury you (since)
ilyas ahmed - in desire (arroyo cd-r)
shannon wright - satellites (secret blood)
visitor - skin warmth (visitor: elizabeth harris & ilyas ahmed)
visitor - the edges (visitor: elizabeth harris & ilyas ahmed)
sarah jaffe - two intangibles can't be had (even born again)
visitor - burn out (visitor: elizabeth harris & ilyas ahmed)
visitor - flickering (visitor: elizabeth harris & ilyas ahmed)
grouper - dragging the streets (a i a: dream loss)
pj harvey - the wind (is this desire?)
bonnie prince billy - new tibet (wolfroy goes to town)
smog - cold blooded old times (accumulation: none)
swans - reeling the liars in (my father will guide me up a rope to the sky)
father murphy - in the flood with the flood (anyway your children will deny it)
thisquietarmy - ballad of a shepherdess (resurgence)
six organs of admittance - enemies before the light (luminous night)
peg simone - oh holy night (secrets from the storm)
picastro + nadja - a new souls benediction (fool, redeemer)
exhaust - we have a wide range of products and services for you in this time of need (grenadilla splinter)
exhaust - this magnificent place will look better abandoned (grenadilla splinter)
retribution gospel choir - bless us all (2)
scratch acid - she said (greatest gift/ scratch acid reissue)
rapeman - monobrow (two nuns and a packmule)
pussy galore - sweet little hi-fi (sugarshit sharp ep)
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