Bringing Home the Ashes

 

When I was a young kid, I struggled to sleep at night.  I used to lay in bed for hours tossing and turning trying to find some way to relax and get to sleep.  Sometimes I found some relief by imaging that my bed was out in a wild wind storm in the middle of an isolated place far from civilization or away from help.  In order to survive the storm, I would have to hunker down, curl up snugly in my blankets to keep warm and be protected from the imaginary deluge.  Plus I had to stay calm to be ready for any unforeseen dangers and problems.  This narrative was made more intense when our home was actually being battered by the fierce winter wind storms that occasionally ripped through our small town on the Oregon coast.  Hearing 70-110 mph wind gusts physically assault our home made everything more vivid.  The staying calm part of my waking dreams would help me eventually drift off to sleep, or at the very least I would be entertained by my pretend disaster narrative.

 

I was first introduced to Northern England’s The Wild Swans via the Sire Records compilation sampler Just Say Yes in late 1987.  I bought it because it was cheap and had a couple of songs by established favorites like Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen, Erasure, and The Smiths.  It wasn’t until the following spring that The Wild Swans’ fitting song “Young Manhood” became an obsession.  I say fitting, because I was in the midst of becoming a young man, had recently become a licensed driver, and was earning a regular income, and became responsible for managing that money and buying my own stuff (clothes, food, necessities), and to perhaps save for my upcoming college years.  I failed at money management and spent all of it on CDs and records.  What’s interesting to me is that that fruitful sampler introduced me to The Replacements, James, Throwing Muses, The Mighty Lemon Drops, and of course, The Wild Swans.  By the spring of 1988, I would skip those songs that first tempted me to this collection and would only listen to these other bands’ song and even some of their albums, such as The Mighty Lemon Drops’ excellent World Without End album, which I played constantly.  However, I could not find any music by The Wild Swans anywhere.  That summer (1988), a second Sire compilation surfaced in a similar fashion named Just Say Yo, and had another track by the Wild Swans.  This one was named “Bible Dreams,” and the lush and urgent sound of it sent chills up and down my spine.  It instantly transported me to another reality – a new reality that I desperately wanted to visit.

 

There’s a howl that leads up into the persistent drums of the opening track and that first single “Young Manhood.”  The drums feel like it is trudging up too many stairs.  It’s fitting considering the futility of the chorus: “Here it comes: young manhood / One day all of this will be yours.”  It starts out like a congratulations for reaching this milestone and now (wave of the arms) ‘here you go – deal with all of these shitty problems.’  At seventeen, that’s exactly how I felt.  I did not (and still don’t) know what I wanted to do, where I wanted to be, or know how to get to any of these things, but now responsibility was slapping me in the face.  Paul Simpson’s lyrics throughout this album seem to be drawn from a post-war England perspective.  A time of rebuilding and what must have been a time of uncertainty.  How do we do this?  How do we proceed?  This reflection and doubt juxtaposed with loads of Christian references really speaks to me.  There’s a lot of perseverance within these lyrics that feel like passages from a great classic novel, yet almost every moment of triumph is tempered by failure or loss.  The brilliant title track “Bringing Home the Ashes” provides the line: “the heart in the heart of England can never die” just before the chorus begins: “Bringing home the ashes / is more than I can bear.”  The dreamy keyboards that introduce this song combined with the lovely repetitive guitar melody has always been my favorite.

 Jeremy (Jem) Kelly really shines throughout!  His guitar work is exemplary, and I believe that it’s highly underrated.  That howl I mentioned earlier is a key for me.  It kind of sounds like a muted version of a train whirring through a tunnel, or as I envisioned in my youth: a howling wind.  Most of these songs are adorned with this sound in some way or other adding to the gravity of the words and creating an atmosphere that expanded my world view and made me feel like I was privy to knowledge regarding human nature that maybe I wasn’t quite ready for.  I truly think that my fascination and love of his guitar stylings is still influencing the types of music I gravitate toward.  Kelly’s guitar work however is everything I was looking for at that time.  His ability to create those controlled feedback howls, his lithe fills and twinkling plucks of pristine notes.  He’s like a cross between the best of Johnny Marr, Will Sergeant, and the soon to shine at that time David Schelzel from the Ocean Blue. 

It’s difficult for me to highlight songs here, because every song has been a favorite at some point over the past 35+ years.  Listening to it now, I’m finding that even the one song that I never really loved: “Mythical Beast” has blossomed for me now.  Kelly’s guitar solo is so simple, so elegant, and so spine tingling!  Plus I love that whatever the mythical beast in this allegory is, once the angry disillusioned character finds power from this beast, he stubbornly refuses to share it with the world or anyone at all.  It’s a telling example of humankind’s selfishness.  The greatness never fails to inspire and entertain.  

Over all of these years, aside from the already mentioned tracks, favorites include the ‘swallow your medicine’ message of the bright sounding “Bitterness.”  This might be when I first understood the power of pairing heavy lyrics with jaunty pop music.  I cannot forget “Northern England” either.  This melodic masterpiece has always connected with me, not because I identify with northern England (never been), but the lyric refrain “while prayers go unanswered / seeds thrown in the dark” feels appropriate as I’ve always struggled with people’s faith in Christianity and ‘the power of prayer.’  Then there’s the endlessly addictive “Now and Forever” that plays as a coming of age tale and the harsh reality of unmet expectations and dashed hopes. “You want the life you can’t afford / after all that you’ve been through / soon it will be over / boy has this town crippled you.”  Joseph Fearon’s grinding bass here is a highlight.  In fact Fearon’s bass-lines are quietly magnificent throughout.  They humbly anchor these songs with a deep low end, yet they are more than that.  There’s something incredibly memorable and comfortable about the bass-lines that drive these tracks.  Bringing Home the Ashes closes with the straight-forward “The Worst Year of My Life.”  Continuing on with the notion of crushed dreams and inevitability “The Worst Year of My Life” is not as specific as it sounds.  It’s not a list of bad events from the narrator’s past year.  It feels more like a chronicling of how our beginning circumstances can predict or determine our future circumstances.  It’s an unforgiving look at life.  The second verse has always been a depressing favorite: “you were born hungry and you’ll die angry / and if life has failed you leave the cross you’re nailed to / you belong to no one and you owe nothing / there’s no golden future just an open wound there.”  At that time of my life: soon to graduate high school, it felt like a splash of reality versus the ‘future is yours’ and ‘you can achieve anything’ slogans that were being fed ad infinitum.

 

I’ve heard that Simpson disavows this album.  I can understand that he felt like he lost control of his art through the machinery of the music business, and what is up with the drums?  There’s no drummer credited.  Are they real?  Is it a drum machine?  They sound unreal and weirdly dated.  There are some strange choices.  But you know what?  I love these songs, and they introduced me to The Wild Swans’ limited catalog.  I hungrily snapped up their Peel Session EP, which includes the song “No Bleeding,” which is such a brilliant masterpiece that it never fails to overwhelm my senses, and I found their famous debut single “Revolutionary Spirit,” on a Zoo Records compilation.  As an aside, this rare and very limited original vinyl single was added to a list of requests in the Beaverton Tower Records import section every few weeks.  I’m not sure who thought this was reasonable, but they were persistent.

 

The inspiration to profess my longstanding love of this album has come from a variety of resources.  Recently, The H.I. Art on the Edge Surprise Cast has had thoughtful interviews with both Simpson and Kelly individually (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/surprise-cast/id1723695740), the next book on my que to read is Simpson’s memoir Revolutionary Spirit: A Post-punk Exorcism, along with a healthy dose of nostalgia and a need for something familiar and comforting.  Once I re-listened to the album again after several years of dormancy, I was moved to share these thoughts.  I realize that the Wild Swans have been highly regarded by those in the know, yet it seems that they are not known by enough people. 

The Wild Swans "Young Manhood"

These Things Happen

 

It was another cold, misty summer day in the coastal town of Lincoln City, Oregon.  I had recently turned twenty and I was feeling lost.  I was back in my small home town after dropping out of college.  My life was a mess.  I was trying to recover from a poorly done and ill-conceived double nephrectomy during the spring and my mom was struggling through kidney dialysis three days a week at clinic about an hour away and her condition was worsening.  I was working, but only minimal daytime hours.

I was lost.  Numb.  Listless.  Directionless.  So, what did I do?  I finished work and drove south to the lone record store in town.  Driftwood Mac.  Mike had been running the store for several years by that point, but I don’t think anyone knew how it survived.  I’m glad he persevered as long as he did.  It was a home of sorts.  Music and the records and CDs that contained that music were my comfort.  I loved the artwork, the smell, the feel, the sounds, and the information.  Mike was busy painting the walls of the shop.  He did this often, as well as rearranging the display racks.  The shop was rarely in the same position as the previous visit.  It never took long, before the old unchanging inventory would reveal itself.  Mike had a vast collection of 60s psychedelic band H.P. Lovecraft, as well as a strangely prolific stock of 80s American punk label SST’s discography, as well as imports from the arty UK label 4AD Records.  That’s what was so strange about his inventory is that it catered to a very small niche of music fans.  One might think that he would’ve stocked the current top 40 style artists and would’ve plastered his walls and displays with ephemera dedicated to the hit makers.  However he managed to survive, he did, and I am thankful. 

 

On that particular day, he slipped a CD into my hand, as I perused his strong supply of Dinosaur Jr. colored vinyl.  The CD was a record label compilation.  It had a very simple design.  White with an aqua flavored green font and picture.  It was named Glass Arcade and the record label was Sarah Records.  He had done this to me before.  He had given me a Flying Nun Records compilation named In Love with These Times that blew my mind!  Even at that point, a couple of years later, I was still learning new to me artists by referencing that CD.  I don’t remember if I purchased this recommendation, or if he gave it to me.  He simply told me that I would like it.  By the time I returned to my childhood room, the mist had become so thick and heavy outside that everything was soaked and it was difficult to see.  I put this unassuming CD into my player and shuffled stuff around my room, opened the window blinds and the window allowing the cool damp air into my bedroom.  The dimming light of the evening was shrouded by heavy clouds, yet a crack of sunlight emitted a haunting golden glow from the west horizon.   I laid back onto my bed and let the sound of The Field Mice’s “Holland Street” envelop me.

 

Glass Arcade included no dates, only a couple of murky green photographs, and the band names of song titles for the sixteen songs.  I did not know of any of these artists, or songs, but damn the first few songs not only felt like they fit perfectly together, but also fit the gloomy weather.  This was my definition of rainy day music.  This music was reflective, thoughtful, and quietly inventive.  I absolutely loved it!  

What was this?  This music was a timeless collection of songs from an alternate universe, where introspection is valued and introverts are the most important target audience.  I listened intently as every song played, and then began the disc again and then again.  I immediately began planning mixtapes to make that included a lot of these songs paired with similar things I had discovered in the few years leading up to this moment.  Some of those early Creation Records bands, some of the 4AD artists like the Cocteau Twins, and my favorite songs by The Go-Betweens.  I felt inspired by this mysterious music.

 

It would be a couple years before I learned that the occasional Sarah Records release that I would purchase were actually new and that this music was currently being made.  I hadn’t been sure if these were artifacts from another period of time.  I felt like I had been pretty knowledgeable about music, yet this entire Sarah thing had alluded me.

I’m currently reading These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story by author Jane Duffus (https://www.janeduffus.com/sarah-records).  I’ve had the book for about a year and a half, but am just now getting to it, and I am reading its finely detailed account of the label and the co-conspirators involved incredibly slowly.  It’s a well written book and completely thorough, immersive and enjoyable (for Sarah Records fans especially).  I am savoring it.  Not only am I a huge fan of the label and most of the artists who recorded for them, but I am a huge fan of the inspiration that this fandom provided me. 

It was that punk rock thing.  The Do It Yourself thing that was cool.  Not the DIY corporate sloganeering that defined home makeover design media in the early 00s, but the make the shit you like – anyone can do it idea that Punk rock first brought about.  Don’t like what you hear on the radio, then make your own music.  The music of Sarah and the way the label tried to go about things by being fair to their artists and fans by trying to avoid the sexist greed and depravity of the rock-n-roll institution was not just noteworthy, but admirable.  Sarah, along with many small indie labels such as K, Slumberland, Pop Narcotic, SpinArt, Teen-Beat, Simple Machines, and Independent Project Records, helped me feel a part of a community.  I’ve never been a scenester.  I have always been reluctant to fall in with a particular insular music scene.  Yet with artists, labels, and mail order distributers all over the western world introducing me to terrific music, it felt like my world was expanding and that somehow I was part of it.  No, I wasn’t making music, but I was helping spread the word and supporting those who did.  It was rewarding and exciting!  I was corresponding with people all across the globe on a very personal level, instead of just memorizing their names from record sleeves as I listened to their music.  Nearly every day I was receiving 7” singles, demo tapes, letters, or postcards in the mail.  This was what inspired me to start writing and to (mistakenly) believe that my voice was valid.  Even though my world was growing through this indie music stuff, it also felt smaller.  Suddenly, I fely=t important.  Everything was not so daunting.  It helped me realize that there are lost souls everywhere and we can bond over our shared sensibilities.  It wasn’t long after Mike introduced me to the Glass Arcade compilation that the idea of This Wreckage was born.   Who would’ve thought I’d be still trying to make it interesting 34 years later?  

Whatever the case, reading about how immersive the Sarah devotees were back when the label was active (1987-1995), reminded me to go back and listen to my introduction and how it made me feel then.  It still inspires me as much as the music gives me those rainy day vibes.  Yes, there’s a lot of nostalgia there, as I miss the idealism and the innocence of my own youth.  It makes me wonder if it’s not just me losing that fire with age, or if we as a whole have.  I’m savoring the book because I do want those feelings back and listening to these old songs helps. 

 

Turned to Stone

The Blue Herons

“Turned to Stone”

(self-released)

Every so often songs come into our lives that stand out from the rest.  There are many reasons for this: like it has to withstand repeated listens and be catchy, and/or it has to speak to us as individuals in a way that begs for those repeated listens.  For me, right now, that song is “Turned to Stone” by the bi-continental duo The Blue Herons.  At 2024 years’ end, I sang their praises via a breakdown of their singles compilation Go On (see review here).  And here they are picking up with a recent single that is as good as they’ve ever done, which is an incredibly high bar.

Andy Jossi’s music never ceases to astound!  He is a master of layering immaculately performed instrumentation together both in dreamy, languid, and broad paint strokes, and effervescent detailed touches that nearly always climax in satisfying dramatic crescendos.  “Turned to Stone” is the latter here and it absolutely impeccably sets an emotional foundation for Gretchen DeVault’s yearning vocals.  They’ve both so captured such a tight bond in this song, it’s difficult to believe that this was put together remotely. 

On the surface this song can be taken quite literally.  A heavy hearted plea for the seasons to change and hoping for the darkness of winter to transition to the longer, warmer, and sunnier days of Spring and Summer.  Personally DeVault’s words have hit me hard.  I am currently in a period of an intense health struggle, where I’ve been taking a chemo drug to prevent tumor growth, and the side effects of that drug are preventing me from being able to live a purposeful and enjoyable existence.  The chorus goes:

“Long days are gone

From the horizon now

The winds grow so strong

They could blow it all away” 

First of all, when hearing this song, I dare you not to get this refrain stuck in your head in the best possible way.  DeVault’s voice soars and arrests hearts with her brilliant performance.  For me, these words present the dilemma I’ve been wrestling with.  The long days could be gone if I give them up in order to feel stronger, while those strong winds could blow away the three years of hard work I’ve put in on the drug, which has indeed stopped the rampant tumor growth that was occurring in my head.  This song has helped me address this quandary and face the hard reality of my situation.  Wow!  I get chills every time I hear it, which is as often as possible!

On a macro scale, I also feel like this song is a perfect distillation of our times now in a post-Covid (or post-fll in the blank here) world.  We are all a few years out of the intense lockdown, but I’m not sure that many of us have really recovered.  It seems like there are many scars left that have not yet healed, even if unacknowledged or recognized.  Perhaps I’m paranoid, but it feels like there’s a lot more mistrust in our society that is not only between individuals and institutions (government, corporations, media, etc.), and more troubling between us as individuals (neighbors, friends, family).  These are things that have always existed, yet it seems now like they are conflicts that our unplanned isolation has driven an insurmountable wedge into our lives.  Our “heavy hearts have turned to stone.”  I believe that this song is a plea as well as a wish or an instruction for us to get over all of this shit and let optimism and cooperation back into our lives.

If only this song could be heard by a lot more people. However one interprets it for themselves, it is an incredible four-plus minute song worth more than notice and acclaim.  This is a truly affecting piece of art that I feel privileged to listen to.  I hope to see you all waiting “for the sun to rise again.”

(https://theblueherons1.bandcamp.com/track/turned-to-stone)

 

 

the blue herons "turned to stone"