In Gowan Ring - Hazel Steps Through a Weathered Home
(BlueSanct)
Jon Michael B'eirth has been making strange and unusual, some might say "wyrd" folk music for nearly a decade now under the name In Gowan Ring. On this, his ninth full-length (including early cassette-only releases, a Compendium of greatest hits, and a couple of compilations of outtakes and alternate versions known as Exists & Entr'Ances) and first for Chicago-based Blue Sanct, home of (and run by) Drekka's Michael Anderson, Jon adds to a unique canon of work that occasionally crosses paths with other folkie non-conformists Gryphon, The Fool, Martyn Bates, the Third Ear and Incredible String Bands, Simon and Garfunkel (he has also recorded a version of "Scarborough Fair," which he called "The First True Love"), Fit & Limo, and several acts centered around Timothy Renner (Stone Breath, Mourning Cloak, Timothy the Revelator), with whom Jon shared a stage at the fourth Terrastock festival in Seattle a couple of years ago.
The opening track, "Orb Weavers," is rich with horns, cellos, and violins, such that comparisons with the mellower side of early King Crimson will immediately spring to mind (particularly "Cadence and Cascade" in this instance, but any of the first four will give you an accurate benchmark to gauge the sound in your mind's ear as you progress through the album.) The velvety harmonies on the title track beckon Paul and Art into your consciousness, and the madrigal, round-like vocals are reminiscent of the material the old Viking busker, Moondog was shouting from NYC street corners some 40-odd years ago. You'll find vestiges of Donovan's "Writer in the Sun," "Lullabye of the Spring," "Sand and Foam," etc. in "The Seer and The Seen," but B'Eirth brings an almost religious fervor to the track, much like a priest singing high mass or a Cantor entertaining his congregation. Elsewhere, the intimacy of the flute driven thing that is "Kingdom of The Shades" bleeds across the entire release, leaving this listener with a warm and fuzzy feeling?as if Jon Michael were standing in my living room, delivering a personal concert for a cadre of my closest friends.
In a time when the world is moving much too fast, Jon Michael not only takes the time to stop and smell the roses, he's kneeling down to plant the seeds, and squatting Buddha-like to watch those roses grow. Another aspect of his songwriting that recalls the best of Donovan is the ease with which he slides into gentle, memorable, almost childlike melodies, a talent he also shares with John Prine. Like those masterful songwriters, there is a depth to these songs that is revealed only upon repeated listens. At first the ear is attracted to the surface melody, but after listening a second time, I uncovered the delicate addition of a flute-like sackbut, a gently strummed cittern, a violin, or one of Jon's homemade instruments in the background or in the left or right channel that the ear missed the first time through. (The instrumental coda to "A Poet's Lyre" provides an excellent opportunity to examine this special feature.) It is this natural gift for creating multi-layered compositions that is so attractive about Jon's work in general and Hazel Steps through a Weathered Home in particular.
Yet in spite of all this seemingly subliminal activity, these compositions don't sound busy or overly complicated, as if Jon were trying to cram too much "information" into the song. Indeed, there are not 5,000 layers to this onion, but the melancholia, intimacy, and nostalgia of just two or three will bring many listeners close to tears. If there is a drawback to an otherwise perfect collection, it's that some listeners will become impatient with the restraint that Jon brings to these pieces. Sadly, not everyone is prepared to shut down their self-inflicted "busy schedules" to give Hazel Steps through a Weathered Home the patience and time it needs to be appreciated. But it is these listeners' loss. The rest of us need more releases like this. As the saintly, monklike B'eirth has continually demonstrated over the last decade, patience, silence, and space DO have a place in this rat race of a world. We all should, nay, must take the time to plant some roses. Quite simply, one of the half dozen or so best releases of the year. Go hence, and acquire ye thusly.
Strange Fortune description
The fourth In Gowan Ring album is the most minimal musically and the most tender lyrically. Band leader B'eirth is the focus but this also features guest musicians Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee of Blood Axis.
In Gowan Ring's B'eirth is certainly an effusive fellow. If the "fever dream by way of Austin Osman Spare" nature of his lyrics wasn't evidence enough, just wait until you see how In Gowan Ring's self-styled "Conductor" describes his own music. For some, "Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home" will merely be a spaced out folk album of gauzy acoustic guitars, Renaissance Fair backing bands, and B'eirth's fey vocals. However, it's obviously much more to him, a "liminal lucubration of specular poetry composed within a euphonious and eclectic arrange of acoustic, archaic, and homespun instruments."
I guess that's as good a definition as any, especially given that "lucubration" means "pedantic or pretentious writing". And "pretentious" is a pretty good start to describing "Hazel Steps...". However, B'eirth pours himself so completely into his pretenses that they contain his whole heart and soul, as hinted at by "lucubration"'s other definition: "laborious study or meditation".
For me, "psychedelic folk" has all sorts of pretense, be it the seriously silly lyrics or the music, which sounds like it was written by people who sincerely wish they'd been gypsies in a previous life (or residents of Middle-Earth). But confound it all if In Gowan Ring actually takes that fairly ephemeral genre and provides it with as concrete an example as possible (even more completely, I'd argue, than movers and shakers within the genre such as Current 93). In Gowan Ring's "The Glinting Spade" is as beautiful as any psych-folk album can be without completely materializing. By it's very nature, there must be an otherworldly quality to the music, or else it ceases being, well, psychedelic.
"Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home" lacks many of the droney, ambient elements that were so entrancing about "The Glinting Spade". As a whole, it's a more stripped down effort. However, that doesn't really diminish the album's preternatural feel. Much of that is due to B'eirth's vocals and lyrics. B'eirth's wispy voice is always barely there, as if it's made of little more than spiderwebs and moonlight.
But such a voice would be useless without equally obtuse lyrics, which In Gowan Ring has in spades. B'eirth sees no problem in singing lines like "Petals of jasmine, anemones in a water bowl float/How grace arranged the chance array come eventide's shifting glow" or "Shimmers splendent merge, laden tendrils waver/Descending drops of water disperse in lucid layer" with all due gravity. Don't be surprised if you feel like you need a refresher course on Romantic poetry before delving into B'eirth's flowery prose.
As I said before, "Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home" is missing some of "The Glinting Spade"'s more atmospheric elements. However, that only reveals the lovely arrangements of B'eirth and his various conspirators for all to see. Acoustic guitars are eminent, plucking out delicate melodies upon melodies. But citterns, cimboloms, timbrels, flutes, and other "acoustic, archaic, and homespun instruments" all make their appearance. The songs are much starker and darker than on "The Glinting Spade", but they also have more gravity and substance.
"Hazel Steps"'s is about as solemn as the album gets, like Nick Drake on a funeral march set to a bodhran beat. Meanwhile, "The Wind That Cracks The Leaves" feels caught in a slowly constricting web, an interplay of picked acoustic guitars and a chorus of B'eirths all caught in a slow, downward spiral. The lovely thing is that despite its pretensions, or more likely because of them, that spiral can easily ensnare the unsuspecting listener in its magical folds.
In Gowan Ring
Hazel Steps Through A Weathered Home
Reviewed by Troy Southgate
I caught IN GOWAN RING live when they came to London to support Rose McGowan’s SORROW a few years ago, and ended up having a very interesting post-performance chat with B’eirth, the group’s lead vocalist. I was also pleased to note that he was genuinely interested in all things Folk, and told him about the fantastic song library they have over at Cecil Sharp House in North London. This, IGR’s fourth full-length recording, is assisted by the likes of Michael Moynihan (bodhran) and Annabel Lee (violin/viola) of BLOOD AXIS, Philip & Gayle Neuman (alto/tenor sackbut) of DE ORGONOGRAPHIA/O.R.B. and Margie Wienk (violincello) from IDITAROD, FERN KNIGHT and EYESORES. The opening track, ‘The Orb Weavers’, has a slowly-scything bow oozing gentle sadness over a sweet guitar-picking melody and the softly-spoken vocal style that we’ve come to expect from IGR. Five minutes spent in Paradise. And then a bodhran’s rolling beater smoothes us on into ‘Hazel Steps’, as B’eirth’s lilting voice recalls the golden age of late-1960s Folk. This is a moderate soft-shoe embrace for lovers who ‘dance a hazel step in fluid pace [and] trace whispers in the clear’, swirling dresses and dreamy eyes found cavorting slowly ‘by light of full moon glare’. The acoustic strains and calculated, nursery-rhyme delivery of ‘The Seer and the Seen’ remind me of Robert N. Taylor’s CHANGES, a song released in the present but so very steeped in the past. ‘Kingdom of the Shades’ introduces yet more instrumentation in the form of a plunking harp and husky flute, their notes descending like falling leaves and weaving a musical tapestry that entreats the listener to ‘swim within this dream’. A nice introduction, perhaps, for ‘Morning’s Waking Dream’, an upbeat strum of chords accompanied by a vocalisation that would grace any NICK DRAKE album. ‘A Poet’s Lyre’ is a proud gypsy strut of barely-moving Cimbolom and drifting voices, an Irish-sounding dirge at a funeral of ‘black earth’. In ‘The Wind That Cracked the Leaves’, the vocals are slightly deeper and more emotional. The plucking of the guitar strings and quickening psychedelic voices are a constant reminder that Time’s cyclical ticking will one day cleave us all ‘low to the ground’. Finally, ‘Two Towers’ - which was written prior to 9/11 and whose relevance to such events are purely ‘coincidental or mysterious’ - is a combination of piano and voice, tried elsewhere by CURRENT 93 but in this case more structured and songlike. At this point the circle closes but does not end. My interpretation of the ‘weathered home’ mentioned both here and in several of the other songs on this CD, is that nature marches endlessly onwards to claim the ‘lonely limbs’ that have no real effect upon the world and who ‘limp in life awhile’ before finally succumbing to the ‘churn and wallow’ of the ages. The Weathered Home: surely this is the one certainty, the only constant upon which all of us can and must depend? This is a fine and refreshing album, putting both man and nature in the correct perspective. If you would like more details, visit the IG website at http://www.ingowanring.com
|
