20 Albums of 2007: #15
Horse Feathers - Words Are Dead
In my review I compared Justin Ringle to the Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser, and the more I listen to both records, the more right I think I was. Not about the actual sonic qualities of their voices, of course; whereas Leithauser sounds like a young, herniated Dylan fearlessly bawling at an audience of noisy drunks, Ringle's tremulous lilt sounds as easily frightened off as a colt. He and Peter Broadrick have managed maybe the most stunningly alchemical record on my list,* one that always sounds like two guys playing but that manages to make the whole orders of magnitude greater than its parts. There are obvious stunners here - the violin refrain on "Finch on Saturday," the swooping saw/violin duet in the middle of "Hardwood Pews," "Walking & Running"'s chorus ("I want out / I want to curse and shout / Get me / Get me out your mouth" - transcription does it no favours, of course, but that repeated "Get me" might be my favourite vocal moment of 2006), the whole of the closing "Mother's Sick." But what makes Words Are Dead such a great album is that the album tracks are easily of comparable quality, and all twelve tracks blur together in a rich, late summer haze.
Although Ringle is singing in English, and reading over the included lyrics is illuminating, the real truth here is the sound; partly because you can inject your own meaning while you're still puzzling out the mystery of Ringle's phrasing, partly because the surface impression is one of humane wisdom, partly because this record might be the best example from the last couple of years how music can take words and elevate their meaning - there's a world of significance in the above-quoted chorus, for example, but it's not discursive. I can't write it at you, I can only play you the song and wait for you to recognize it. It's a difficult trick, and one that makes Horse Feathers a bitch to write about, but also makes Words Are Dead worth coming back to again and again, in relentless pursuit of the ineffable.
*(possible contenders: Damien Jurado and Monkey Swallows the Universe)
