Review by Thom Jurek
No-Neck Blues Band were Revenant-founder, the late John Fahey's, favorite band, and it's too bad he didn't live to see the release of this next edition in No-Neck Blues Band's catalog. For the uninitiated, the band hails from Manhattan, upper and lower, and is comprised of mostly hirsute men and women who have nothing whatsoever to do with any blues you might be thinking of. They are mysterious (no one knows exactly how many recordings they've issued, though this is their third CD), they don't draw attention to themselves, and they are awesome. Their music can be loosely described, and was in their press release, as "often stumbling into a groove as irresistible as the swamp-choogle of vintage Creedence. Blues for fans of Beefheart, early Royal Trux, Dock Boggs, and Heliocentric Worlds-era Sun Ra." But just as often, it drifts into ghostly trancelike moments where rhythms and riffs turn around on each other in a spare, spacious hoodoo mix that is as sparse as dust and sounds like the players have been indulging in its use. Improv and groove slither and snake around one another, whispering their bliss with guitars, various drums, flutes, whistles, horns, and wanton bass. Produced by Jerry Yester at his Ozarks studio (Yester has worked with Tom Waits and Tim Buckley and was a member of the Lovin' Spoonful), the sound separations and quality real time-space maneuvers represent accurately what the band is like live. There are four tracks listed on the sleeve of this handsome package, each being handmade of wood and plastic by the band. But just as the four tracks are listed, there are seven on the CD itself. And number one is not a title so much as a series of lyrics. Weird? You bet. But it's all the more compelling for being so. I can picture reading Thomas Ligotti's creepy short stories to this music. Or doing shamanic tantric sex rituals as well. The boundaries are in your mind, not NNCK's; they wouldn't dream of imposing anything at all on your fragile psyche. Consider this a small snapshot, 75-minutes-worth, of the band doing what they do best: engaging and mystifying.
No-Neck Blues Band
Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones but Words Will Never Hurt Me
[Revenent; 2001]
Rating: 9.0
There was a time hundreds of years ago where, in many parts of the world, there was no such thing as a musician. That's not to say there was no music, of course. Among small tribes of people in Africa or the early Americas, there was no such thing as a musician because there was no such thing as a non-musician. Music was a daily part of everyone's life, and without modern conveniences like turntables and CD players, that music had to be made anew every day. Now, when it came time to doing this, were there those that stepped up, stood out, took the lead? Probably. But it's also a pretty safe bet that there was no such thing as an audience. The making of music was for everybody, as important a part of their lives as the food they ate or the air they breathed.
Today, music has become very sectionalized. There's a discernable line between musicians and non-musicians, between those who know and those who do not. But there are those who still scoff at such segregation, those who recognize that music is in the hearts of us all-- it merely needs to be conjured up. For every buzzkill who believes music to be a solely academic exercise, there are those who believe otherwise, those who recognize that when it comes to making music, there's something more important than training, discipline or hard work: passion. There are, to this day, people who believe, as did the far wiser souls who graced these grounds before us, that music is a crucial, healing force that all can and must play a part in. For these people, there is the No-Neck Blues Band, an ironically named New York based octet making music rooted in the tradition of people for whom music was not some mere frivolity, but a way of life.
The music on Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones but Words Will Never Hurt Me has a very primal feel about it. These are songs built out of the chants, moans and screams of its makers every bit as much as pianos, guitars, basses, harmonicas, flutes, horns and drums. The songs here often start slow, with one, two or three members of the group picking up a simple musical idea and running with it. Very patiently, they'll elaborate on their chosen theme, while the rest of the octet flounders about it, searching for different ways to interact, waiting for the right point of entry. This is a fascinating process, one which allows the listener to observe while these songs are repeatedly built, taken apart and put back together.
"Assignment Subud," for example, one of the few tracks on the album given a name, begins with a prolonged period of improvised noise. Percussion is played haphazardly, bereft of any rhythm. Woodwinds and strings enter and exit, each taking their own paths and unconcerned with the other instruments. Guitars are strummed at random. A spastic saxophone interjects wildly. A few minutes in, a distant female voice appears in the mix as the percussion tightens slightly, like buzzards coming together from disparate parts of the sky, starting to circle, preparing to swoop down upon a carcass. A bass is bowed, a male voice joins in. The two singers interact, not concerning themselves with words, using their voices instead as instruments. By the six-minute mark, the pieces begin to come together; the guitar parts begin to resemble a melody, the vocals take a non-static pattern and the percussion section tightens, now keeping a very discernable, very driven beat around which the other instruments sculpt their improvisations. From here on in, the song propels itself, building towards a dramatic climax where the saxophone returns, squealing madly as the male vocalist cries out in passion. He speaks no words, and yet the listener understands.
Other songs, like "The Natural Bridge," the album's opener, move along at a more peaceful pace, lingering on a beat and flirting with the idea of structure, like a hybrid between an Native American chant and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's most out-there moments. Elsewhere, on the album's untitled closer, the group nearly finds song structure, employing Beefheartian tendencies (both in the instrumentation and the vocals) to their style, actual lyrics, and a surprisingly funky bass part to the group's lazy groove. It almost seems strange after the freedom that precedes it, but ultimately, it makes sense. No-Neck is a band constantly experimenting and constantly playing, in the most innocent, childlike sense of the word. It only makes sense, then, that eventually they'd stumble upon something that resembles a traditional song. And by closing the album on this note, No-Neck and veteran producer Jerry Jester (Tom Waits, the Lovin' Spoonful) quiet those jaded naysayers out there who will attempt to dismiss the inspired, free-spirited nature of the music on Sticks and Stones as amateurish wankery.
Still, No-Neck's primal brand of improvisation might be a hard sell for some. A friend of mine scoffed upon first hearing this album. "I dunno," he said. "It's okay, but it sounds a lot like a bunch of us just jamming in the basement. Maybe I'm just not giving us enough credit, but I don't really get it." But that's just it-- he wasn't giving us enough credit. When I play music with my friends, we don't do it with any intentions of fame, money or recognition. We do it because it's fun. We do it because we love to do it. There's a certain quality, something magical to these sorts of haphazard musical excursions where what's missing in proper structure and form is more than made up for in passion and energy. And it's this same quality that makes the No-Neck Blues Band so damned amazing.
The more I think about it, the less I consider the No-Neck Blues Band's name to be ironic. In a sense, the music on Sticks and Stones has more to do with the blues than the surface lets on. Maybe not in structure, but in the way it transforms raw emotion into musical gold. By shunning the traditional rules of their form, throwing away all expectations, ignoring all of art's potential to create pressure and just playing, the No-Neck Blues Band has given us an album that's every bit as unique as it is moving. Indeed, it's the very freedom from typical music rules, the very casual atmosphere in which this music was clearly created, that makes it work. This music was not made to sell records or to make the musicians household names (in fact, most of the band prefers to remain anonymous). No, this music was made for the only reason music should ever be made: because it had to be.
-David M. Pecoraro, January 16th, 2002
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