Album Reviews

One of the Anthony Wilson-shot photographs in the coffee table quality photobook housed within Songs and Photographs’s handsome, textured paper slipcase— along with the jacketed 180 gram LP (Goat Hill Recordings GHR-005)—is of a church’s red brick back wall, in front of which are three gravestones. The late afternoon sun casts against the wall three long offset shadows.

Normally I’m a “page flipper” photography consumer. Picture of an abandoned car? “Sad”. Picture of a bird soaring well above a cross-shaped “multiple dwelling” bird house without openings? “Freedom” (turns out it’s a feeder, not a house). Picture of a cleanly sawed, vine-covered tree-stump angled on the ground? “Death, renewal”. Bird’s nest perched near the end of broken limb in winter? “Different take on the same theme”.

The three gravestone photo stopped me. The central stone’s large cross makes its shadow easy to identify. A second shadow is of one of the two other similarly shaped monuments. The third shadow is cast by a tree not visible in the picture and one of the stones doesn’t cast a shadow at all. What’s more, the width of the second stone’s shadow more closely resembles what the missing stone’s shadow would look like had it not been swallowed by the tree’s shadow. There’s another shadow cast by something spikey off-camera, or is it badly removed graffiti?

Normally I’d not have given that picture more than a quick, appreciative ADHD glance (had this been a diagnosis when I was kid I’d have been given it and treated for it and I’m glad that didn’t happen). I lingered on it because Wilson’s music was providing a safe personal atmospheric space for such contemplation but had I come up with a glib reaction it might have been "the unseen casts a long shadow".

No doubt he’d prefer the listening be concentrated and without distraction, but he’s only got himself to blame. He provided it! The photobook demands and will get your attention and over time it will enhance rather than distract from the music. On his website Wilson writes “In Songs and Photographs the visual and musical paths of my process converge into a single work in which the songs and the photographs speak back and forth to each other.”

The lyrics to side one’s closer “In Canton” are printed on the other side of the shadow picture. One couplet stood out: “Dust in the finder, haze in the lens/Perspectives that warp, shadows that bend”. I have no idea if putting that song’s lyrics there was purposeful or whether I’m reading more into all of this than Wilson intended, but does that matter? Not really. The point of art is to provoke.

In this case the provocation is a calmative balm that forces the listener to shut out the current world’s craziness and enter Wilson’s contemplative musical and lyrical ecosphere aided here by an intimate, transparent recording that sets a sonic stage and lingers effortlessly there throughout. Put the booklet down, turn out the lights, relax and just listen.

The guitarist is as adventurous here as he’s been throughout his career as a group leader and accompanist for everyone from Willie Nelson to Paul McCartney to Kenny Burrell and as a regular member of Diana Krall’s group, though nothing here is as raucous as his Groove Note organ trio recordings. Plus on some tracks he sings sensitively and evocatively.

The musical settings vary from the more straight ahead syncopated jazz of “Song From a Dream” to the Ry Cooder-like Americana of the traditional “Great Dream From Heaven”, which sounds like it could be in the soundtrack to a Ken Burns documentary. Below (with permission) you can stream “While We Slept”, the lyrics of which encapsulate for me the safe place to which Wilson intends for the album to transport the listener. Side one’s song titles set the mood: three songs about dreams and sleeping and a side closer that opens with the lines “It’s so hard to fall and to stay asleep”.

Though it sounds like an album closer, the lightly countrified title tune “Songs and Photographs” opens side two with a lyric that sums up the album’s eclectic contents: “There isn’t one thing/That doesn’t belong/In songs and photographs”. “Listening to My Hearbeat” follows and includes the line “I guess I had to come here/To slow down my mind/Slow down my mind”. That’s a good description of the album’s calmative effects. “Fear of Losing” is for me the album’s most affecting poetry, and now I’ll stop the “play by play” other to write that presenting in a recording this level of musical intimacy is both daring and difficult.

While the closing song’s lyrics are of a very personal nature they can also be taken as a more open invitation to soar. When the final strains of “Over the Sea” fade out, you’ll know you’ve been taken somewhere special and secure if just for two sides of a vinyl record album.

Wilson’s liquid playing on this record soothes and circles with musical gestures one more striking than the next, surrounded by a sympathetic and at time provocative backing group consisting of Gerald Clayton on piano, Joshua Crumbly on bass, Patrick Warren on keyboards, samples, organ, pump organ and dulcitone and Jay Bellerose on percussion that includes a pipe-bomb of a kick drum stomp that will challenge and perhaps defeat your cartridge so be prepared.

The production by Wilson and “Tone Poet” Joe Harley (a name given by Charles Lloyd and worn somewhat uncomfortably by Harley) and Michael C. Ross’s engineering delivers a “who needs tape?” digital recording. I know it’s risky to write that here, but listen and try arguing otherwise. The transparency, three-dimensionality and instrumental and vocal “body” rival the best tape recordings I can think of and the background blackness out of which all of this emerges, betters them all. The three dimensional picture the recording paints is vivid and the bottom end weight will make your speakers throb in a good way. The record is cut to close to the label and the bass drum is not easily tracked! If your reaction is “then who needs physical media?” you’ve not seen the package and the book, which is necessary to fully appreciate the experience.

Speaking of which, since our template doesn’t include graphic production, and those involved deserve credit here you go: “All printed components…were produced at Little Steidl in Göttingen, Germany, designed by Nina Holland. Binding by Hartmut Köhler Buchbinderei in Rodgau, Germany. The paper is GardaPat Kiara 150 gsm, an acid-free, wood-free, coated paper produced without optical brighteners at Cartiere del Garda in Riva del Garda, Italy. The colored boards are from Cartonnerie Jean in Bonnat, France”—which is another way of saying that the physical product is as special as the music and the recording.

Enjoy ”While We Slept” recorded using the Top Wing Red Sparrow cartridge, SAT CF-09 arm, Continuum Caliburn turntable and Ypsilon VPS-100 phono preamp with Ypsilon MC-16L SUT.