Claudia Schmidt's New Whirled Order Makes Old Ideas New Again

CLAUDIA SCHMIDT

New Whirled Order

Red House Records 275

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The youth of every generation tend to believe that what’s hot is “new.” Is Claudia Schmidt’s new album folk music, jazz, or spoken word? Yes, yes, and yes. Schmidt isn’t trying to be cool–she just is. That’s the way she’s been doing things long before today’s young whipperhipsters were even born. Call New Whirled Order a mature album whose direct antecedents are a mélange of 1950s modal jazz, the ethos of Beat poetry, and the Folk Revival’s unleashing of singer-songwriters and its recovery of forgotten instruments.  Schmidt’s opening track, “Already,” highlights the way one can integrate dulcimer, accordion, percussion, and guitar, and her scale-smashing vocals occupy the space you might expect a rhythm section to appear*

Schmidt’s folk material tends toward poignant themes such as “Sea of Forgiveness,” with a lone oboe adding wistful notes to the mix, or “Jane’s Gone,” a lullaby-like lilt dedicated to her recently deceased mother. But this album’s overall tone is joyful, not melancholic. The themes in “Coward in the Face of Love” are serious, but the melody is bouncy, the hooks memorable, and Schmidt’s soaring notes are evocative of Motown. For comic relief, Schmidt offers “Strong Woman Has a Bad Day Polka,” a song indicative of her penchant for turning prosaic observations into offbeat humor. This time Betsy Dorris’ oboe sounds like it swallowed a piccolo.

Schmidt exercises her jazz muse on “Dawn Star,” whose melody she co-wrote with guitarist Dean Magraw. The lyrics are poetic and sung with a soulful coolness evocative of Chet Baker. By contrast, “Sometime Ago” is piano-based cool jazz with scat interludes–more in the Helen Morrill tradition with Ella Fitzgerald breakouts. Want more jazzy departures? I was surprised to find that “Nothing” was one of hers and not something from Leonard Cohen’s backlist. Then there is pure poetry–her paean to the unspoken in “Longing,” which is bookended by dulcimer/guitar instrumentation and Schmidt’s angelic warbles. Schmidt takes us across styles and across time, so what better way to end than with a round– also dedicated to her mother–in which Sally Rogers, Howie Bursen, and Jeff Davis add their voices. What a perfect title–New Whirled Order draws upon musical ideas so old they’re new again.  

Rob Weir

 * The YouTube version of "Already" lacks the accordion of the studio version, but this is a high-quality video that proves Claudia is even more dynamic live.

Aurélie Dorzée Fills the Empty Spaces

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AURÉLIE DORZÉE

Horror Vacui

Home Records http://homerecords.be/en/album-horror_vacui-435.html

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To say that Belgian chanteuse/violinist Aurélie Dorzée is somewhat unorthodox is akin to saying that Cirque du Soliel is a tad daring, and the circus analogy doesn’t end there. Her latest, Horror Vacui, takes its title from Italian art critic Mario Praz and translates “fear of the empty,” a term he coined to describe how Victorians filled every space in their homes. It’s a double pun for Dorzée, who neither leaves silences on her album, nor fills them with what you’d expect. She describes her material as “experimental folk,” though such a label is merely a convenient handle for an uncategorizable blend of minimalist sounds. She often merely plucks the violin strings and fills the spaces with vocal scales, keening, and primal screams. Her parents were in the theatre, and the overall feel of the album is often dramatic, but in the twisted way that an existential circus might present itself. (Think one of Cirque’s jongleur-based performances.)

Her violin playing is what one might get via a mash of classical training, Roma abandon, and the darkness of Scandinavian industrial rock. When she mixes vocals, even wilder combinations suggest themselves. “Le Roi et la Marionette,” for instance–the title is lifted from an Urbain Du Roure novel–evokes the smoky cafe melancholia of Edith Piaf, but also the whimsical theatrics of Yoko Ono. Even the titles are off-kilter: the album’s most conventionally lyrical tune is called “Son sexe végétal” (“His Sex Plant”) and the buzzy Breton-like “Celle Qui a Vent dans La Tête,” which translates (roughly) as “She Who has an Empty Head.”   In many ways, though, the title track encapsulates the album’s feel. Dorzée’s violin is  haunting in both the distinctiveness of the tune and in the foreboding ambiance it conjures. I cannot promise you’ll like this album–only that you’ll not hear its like elsewhere.   

Rob Weir

Think I'm kidding about her oddness. Check out this.  This one is pretty wild as well.

Two from the Sea on DVD

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ALL IS LOST (2013)

Director: J. C. Chandor

Lionsgate, PG-13 , 105 mins.

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 CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (2013)

Director: Paul Greenglass

Columbia, PG-13, 134 minutes

****

Two sea tales and two very different results, starting with the fact that the longer of the two seems to speed by in a flash and the shorter one feels like an eternity.

Things go bad--including the script.

All is Lost is set in the Strait of Malacca (between Malaysia and Sumatra) and it’s hard not think of Flight 370, which disappeared just after flying across it. One of the things we’ve learned thus far is that the Indian Ocean is filled with floating junk piles, including shipping containers like the one that pierces the hull of the 39-foot yacht Robert Redford is sailing solo in All is Lost. We don’t know his character’s name, or why he’s alone in the middle of watery nowhere­—just two of several mysteries in this nearly silent film. (After all, how much dialogue can we expect from a loner alone?) All is Lost is ultimately a disaster film in which everything that can go wrong does, and our protagonist puts himself on a crash course on survival. The film’s one big issue is to force us consider what we would do if we were alone and concluded that our situation was hopeless. The movie is beautifully filmed and the building terror is palpable, but it’s ultimately a one-trick pony whose theme is: just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. Its ambiguous ending notwithstanding, All is Lost is ultimately pretty boring once you get the point that the ocean is way bigger than we.

Surprisingly subtle.

Who would have thought that Tom Hanks would out act Robert Redford? He does in the taut drama Captain Phillips, in which he plays the titular character. Okay, so the real Rich Phillips is from Underhill, Vermont, and Hanks' accent won't make you forget Meryl Streep, but he does a superb job commanding the Maersk Alabama that, in 2009, became the first American commercial vessel to be hijacked in nearly 200 years when a small band of Somali pirates boarded it as it rounded the Horn of Africa. The film is really a psychological cat-and-mouse game between Phillips and the four Somalis holding him hostage for ransom. It is a remarkably balanced look at the differences between First and Third World problems. The Somalis are pirates and capable of violence, but the film shows us that they are also desperately poor men doing the bidding of powerful warlords who prey on captives and captors alike, and that container ships are sitting ducks because the firms that own them are too cheap to arm them or pay for security details. As Phillips puts it in an exchange with pirate captain Abdul Muse (Barkhad Abdi), “We all have bosses,” a statement at once meant to moralize and sympathize. As Phillips and Muse learn, they’re not all that different—each of them seeking honor, each seeking to protect his crew, each longing to get to America, and each not entirely the master of his own fate. Phillips knows that once the US Navy arrives on the scene that Muse and his men—one a humble pilot, one just a boy, and the other perhaps a psycho—can’t win, but Muse knows that he can’t go back empty-handed. It’s a classic Mexican standoff and we sit on the edges of our seats to see if any of it will (or even can) end well. I suppose the film could be criticized as a two-hour striptease, but it’s so well done it doesn’t feel manipulative. It would come close to topping my list for the most surprisingly good film of 2013—one I admit to avoiding in the cinema because the previews led me to believe it would be lame. It’s not. Rent this one—it’s not Citizen Kane, but it’s far from being McHale’s Navy. And it’s not white hats versus black hats either.

Rob Weir

 

A New Pop Diva?

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ROXANNA

Exotica

RoxArt Inc.

Do you like power pop divas? The LA music industry is telling us that a sultry lass named Roxanna is the Next Big Thing. Maybe or maybe not, but she certainly has the pipes to carry it off.

Roxanna comes to us from Iran via Toronto and Los Angeles. She fled Iran when she was 11, worked as an RN in Toronto for a few years, and was encouraged to pursue music. Her debut album was produced by Hollywood’s Mark Portmann, who has also logged time with Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Barbra Streisand, and Christina Aguilera. That pretty much tells you where he’s coming from and, if any doubt lingers, Roxanna counts Olivia Newton-John and Julio Iglesias as among her influences. If you’re thinking big production, dramatic arrangements, and soaring crescendos, you’re spot on. In addition to sessions musicians, the Prague Orchestra adds its swelling strings to the project. For the media blitz preceding the album release, I was sent CD singles of “CloseYour Eyes,” a Portmann/Larry Robbins power ballad, and a throbbing cover of Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello.” Of the two, I liked “Hello” better because Roxanna built the song instead of jumping feet-first into an already over-the-top song.

I confess that this sort of material is not my musical beverage of choice. I tend to find all the one-name pop wonders–Shakira, Beyoncé, Adele, Rihanna–to be interchangeable cups of generic pudding. I also find that the line between drama and melodrama is transgressed repeatedly and shamelessly. I like it when singers showcase the song, not pyrotechnics that remind me of how much I dislike American Idol. But I’d be the first to admit that music strikes people in different ways. If pop divas are your thing, you’ll probably like Roxanna. She has a glorious voice and does what she does exceedingly well. And, as I said, she has the chops to live up to the hype. See what you think and post your thoughts. –Rob Weir

The Dollymopps Take Us Back in Just the Wight Time

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THE DOLLYMOPPS

Wight Cockade

Wild Goose Studios 397

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If you’re sick of all things slick and heavily produced, here’s the antidote. The Dollymopps are a trio from Britain’s Isle of Wight who specialize in reviving old songs and singing them unaccompanied in three-part harmony. Their work is evocative of other English “old songs” revivalists such as The Watersons, the Copper Family, Young Tradition, and John Roberts and Tony Barrand; that is, an eclectic mix of a cappella songs that evoke sea shanties, village folk songs, the music hall, choral groups, and the early Folk Revival. The Dollymopps–the name comes from slang for normal respectable working girls that did occasional solicitation when money was needed–are built around the reedy tenor and soprano of Virgil and Dorana Philpott and the bottom bass of Justin Smith. Theirs is hand-cupped-to-the-ear full-throated singing–often in minor keys and frequently sporting unusual chord changes and unexpected harmonies.

Wight Cockade contains songs to tunes familiar to old songs fans but as the album title suggests, in versions favored on Wight, the English Channel island off England’s south-central coast. If, for example, “The Isle of Wight” sounds really familiar, it’s because it’s a 1916 version of a song sometimes sung as “Adieu, My Lovely Nancy.” For those who know little about the Isle of Wight—read, most North Americans–there are several Percy Goddard Stone (1856-1934) poems set to music, including the delightful “The Recruiting Sergeant.” To know Stone is to know about Wight; he was both a renowned dialect poet and a leading architect whose work remains scattered across the island. Every song on Wight Cockade is both a story within the song, and another of where the song came from. The latter is well told in the album’s succinct but informative notes. The songs include those culled from Lucy Broadwood (1858-1929), whose collections inspired the creation of Britain’s Folk-Song Society. Do you know the Isle of Wight because of Bob Dylan’s 1969 comeback concert? Draw a straight line from Broadwood to Dylan, as her work sparked the British Folk Revival, which inspired the American collectors who inspired the folk revivalists who inspired Dylan. (Got that? In other words, Dylan is Broadwood thrice removed.)

This is a deliciously old-fashioned album. It does, however, demand close listening and it’s not for all tastes. If you need your music processed, heavily backed, and coming at you with mirror balls at 128 beats per minute, steer clear of the shoals. This is music for peasant clothes, a peat fire, and a mug of real ale. Here's an example of their repertoire.–Rob Weir

Ka Provocative but Distancing

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SHIRISH KORDE

Ka

Svarassa Records

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File this one under the category of fascinating, but under realized. Shirish Korde is a genre-bending composer of symphonic music–think Phillip Glass with South Asian influences. Korde is also a music professor at Holy Cross whose works have been performed around the globe and is perhaps best known for his opera Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen. That work, like Ka, was developed with Boston Musica Visa, a group that melds chamber music, opera, theater and, in this case, Indian music. The term Ka comes from the Rig Veda and is a difficult-to-translate Sanskrit noun/pronoun that relates to creation and blurs the boundaries between who and what.

If that seems a bit dense to you, it’s emblematic of both this album’s provocative possibilities and its emotional distancing. It is a five-song cycle, though the term “song” is problematic as ka deemphasizes recognized language. It features soprano Deepti Navaratna, who is both a trained South Indian classical musician and a Harvard neuroscientist. Hers is a stunning voice, though much of what she produces is a vocalization array that aims at those parts of us that are primal and instinctual. They are also nearly impossible to comprehend. The music–arranged primarily for stringed instruments (mostly cello) and tabla–often sounds like the intersection between chant, opera, world music, and free form jazz. At is best it is so hypnotic that I suspect a live performance of Ka would be a transformative experience. Alas, we tend not to listen to CDs the same way in which we absorb concerts. Ka is meant an integrated musical experience. This means that the CD’s numerous quiet passages and silences often fail to provoke meditative reflection and simply seem empty. Likewise, keening vocals meant to tap into spiritual mysteries sound, when ripped from their context, sound like one of Yoko Ono’s odd departures.

None of this is to say that Ka is a bad composition. It might, in fact, be brilliant. But it also validates one of my long held axioms that not all great music should be recorded. Put the musicians on the stage, and barriers melt; remove the stage and mental walls can rise. The latter was my experience with Ka. If I might, it was too academic to be accessible.

Rob Weir     

Light Between the Oceans a Shining Debut

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The Light Between Oceans (2012)

M. L. Stedman

Simon & Schuster 978-1451681758

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This isn’t the sort of novel I generally read. Some would call it “chick lit;” others might dismiss it as “sentimental.” Call it what you wish, but my measure of a good book is one in which an author forces me enjoy a cup of tea the likes of which I’d usually not imbibe.   

Travel through Europe or Australasia and even the smallest towns have monuments to the fallen sons of the Great War, as World War One is generally called outside of North America. Call the conflict the final death of innocence–an event so horrifying that few retained enough faith to believe it would be the “war to end all wars,” as Woodrow Wilson promised. The Great War nipped in the bud the flower of sixteen million youths; those who survived were often physically or psychically scarred for life. Australian Tom Sherburne was one such man. Although he escaped bodily harm, he’s haunted by what he’s seen, what he’s done, and the comrades he’s lost. Above all, Sherburne is a moral man who believes in sin and cannot reconcile himself to his role in the carnage. He wonders why he survived when others he considers more heroic and noble did not. He feels so estranged from humanity that he chooses self-imposed exile and becomes a lighthouse keeper, first off the coast of Tasmania and later on Janus, a one-mile square hunk of rock a hundred miles off Australia’s western coast.

Fiction readers will recognize a guilty conscience as a loaded version of Chekov’s gun.  The Light Between the Oceans spans the years 1918 to 1950, with emphasis on the middle 1920s. A lighthouse keeper’s life couldn’t be lonelier. Every six months boatmen Ralph and Bluey show up to re-provision the keeper and, once every three years, Tom gets leave in the port town of Partageuse. There he meets Isabel Graysmark, ten years his junior, and they fall for each other. Tom tries valiantly to frighten off “Izzy,” as he thinks Janus too remote for a spirited young woman. He’s wrong about that; once they’re married, Izzy takes to Janus like a koala takes to eucalyptus leaves. The missing piece of her bliss is a baby, and that’s where misfortune deals a heavy blow–two miscarriages and a stillbirth in three years and no doctor within a hundred miles of ocean. The loss of the last child has pushed Izzy close to the edge. And then, a miracle?

In 1926, a boat washes ashore with an odd cargo: a dead man and a live baby. By-the-book Tom wants to report the incident immediately, but Izzy chooses to see a discarded cardigan as proof that the mother drowned, and the delivery of a half-starved babe to her milk-saturated breasts as a gift from God. Janus is a well-named island; it stands where the waters of the Indian Ocean tempestuously mingle with those of the Great Southern Sea. It’s also a metaphor for Tom’s dilemma. Does he please his wife, who has named and begun to raise “Lucy” as her own daughter, or does he do as his conscience commands and report the incident in case there’s a grieving mother somewhere on the mainland? Beacon lights are both comforts to seamen and warnings. Is the “light” between the oceans the glow of Lucy’s radiance, or the flickering of Tom’s conscience?  And, when it turns out there is a grieving mother, what does one do about now four-year-old Lucy? Does Tom do the moral thing and alienate his wife and break the hearts of in-laws Bill and Violet who lost both of their sons in the war? Can he give up Lucy? What would you do?

Stedman tugs at the heartstrings as she teases out the intricacies of Tom’s moral crisis and the emotional turmoil of biological mother Hannah (who has sorrows of her own), caregiver Izzy, and family members on both sides. In the middle stands Lucy. What is best for her? Much like the Great War, there doesn’t seem to be any happy ending.

I confess that motherhood tales are not generally on my reading list, but Stedman lured me in. Her descriptions of isolation, lighthouse tending, and survival on the margins are vivid and thought provoking. The moral dilemmas she poses could occupy an ethics class for a week and leave plenty on the table for a debate over gender dynamics. This is M(argot). L. Stedman’s debut novel and it’s (pun intended) an illuminating one.

Rob Weir