Skeletons at the Feast

 

AL JOSHUA - SKELETONS AT THE FEAST  (2023)

(Disc 1)

A1 Fight

A2 Let Me Borrow Your Bicycle

A3 Cleveland Street

A4 Moving Along

B1 Sensitive Young Men

B2 I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down

B3 Let My Body Sing

(Disc 2)

C1 Laurel and Hardy

C2 Strange Red Afternoon

C3 Will

C4 Whisper Your Name

D1 Muffin Man

D2 Bullfighter and the Bull Go By

D3 Like a Tree

This isn’t likely to be the final time I write about Al Joshua’s Skeletons at the Feast, so I'll let myself be informal and spontaneous, just to get some thoughts down.

 

The lead single came out nine months ago, the album itself five. So I’ve been living with the songs for a while. I can hum each part as it comes and get most of the words right when I sing along. The music continues playing in my head when the album itself is over or paused. I’ve probably rehearsed/sung/shouted Laurel and Hardy, in my head or aloud, more times than I’ve heard the actual recording. Same with the first verse or two of Strange Red Afternoon, which I sing all the time to our young daughter. Ditto for the refrains of Like a Tree and Let Me Borrow Your Bicycle. Al’s cadence as he sings “I’ll be moving along” has resounded in my head thousands of times. 

But the album still confounds and surprises me. I’ve been wanting to interview Al about it, but I can’t think of any good questions: I think I’m still too deep in the music, still in its grip, still delighting in the process of living and wondering my way into it. Not that I’ve stopped delighting or learning about or being surprised by Al’s previous three full-lengths (all of which would appear in a list of my, say, top 25 records of all time), but when I think of those three, the sense I have of them, the emotions associated with them, the colors they give off, the lyrical markers and mainstays—all of that is quite clear by now; solid, intact. When I think of Skeletons at the Feast, there’s a multitude of conflicting senses and feelings and colors. It makes the album cover more apt than I originally realized. Back when Al shared it, I thought, “Hmmm, a collage. Alright.” But it is right, it’s exactly right. And I’m still in the labyrinth with the minotaur.

Regardless, here are some early (first-year) guesses or glimpses. 

There is some serious stylistic sprawl on a song-to-song level—from bold and brave (Fight, Laurel and Hardy) to unprecedently happy (Let Me Borrow Your Bicycle) and tender (Whisper Your Name), to brightly epic (I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down, Strange Red Afternoon, Like a Tree), to darkly epic (Let My Body Sing, Will), to capital-r Romantic (Moving Along), to liltingly ironic (Cleveland Street), to Mephistophelian (Sensitive Young Men), to cozy (Muffin Man), to jagged and weary (Bullfighter and the Bull Go By)—and yet the album coheres, for ... well, for at least two reasons. 

The first being that Al is backed by the same small band on each cut. Let Me Borrow Your Bicycle and Let My Body Sing are two very different songs, but they sure have the same keyboard/[harpsichord?] player. The loud bits near the end of Sensitive Young Men and Will are kin, despite the songs themselves being so unlike. The spare drum sound feels comfortable, at once folkish and punkish, no matter what the song. And of course there are always Al’s own rhythm guitar and voice holding the center. 

But the other reason(s) remain a mystery. I am fairly certain there is something else that binds the songs together. Six singles were released in advance (I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down, Let My Body Sing, Fight, Cleveland Street, Strange Red Afternoon, and Sensitive Young Men, in that order) and I was taken aback, every time, at how new and different the latest offering was. “A bag of cats,” Al called it—but demurred that somehow they had found a way not to murder each other. The double album feels cohesive, despite the different directions the skeletons go dancing away in. That was what seemed strangest to me back in mid-February, when the full album came out: that, in the context of the whole, the disparate parts fit. 

There is an underlying (often overt) theme that many songs share, which helps with the unity; but not all songs partake of it (not Sensitive Young Men, not I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down, not Whisper Your Name). So though the thematic links should be part of this elusive other reason, they remain only part. The secret heart is just that, secret.

Side B makes the most epic statement, which means that Disc 1 closes with grandeur. Disc 2 comes roaring in with Laurel and Hardy, much as Disc 1 roared in with Fight; but much as Side A sidestepped the fire lit by Fight and went off exploring quieter streets, so too the whole rest of Disc 2 moves quietly around the (mostly) daylit city. Based on what Al had written about the new songs on the album’s GoFundMe page (see below), I expected every song to sound like Fight or Laurel and Hardy; or maybe, in the more peaceful outskirts, like Strange Red Afternoon or Muffin Man. I thought Skipping Rope, from Anomalous Events, would be the new album’s nearest kin. But only Fight and Laurel and Hardy sound like electrified, full-band co-conspirators of Skipping Rope; and the album as a whole sounds like nothing Al has done before (even when songs originated, as my guess goes, in the writing sessions for Out of the Blue: Moving Along, Will, maybe Bullfighter and the Bull Go By—a new band and new context ease the transplanting). It makes for a strange and absorbing structure, akin to—again—a labyrinth.

And it is precisely this labyrinthine nature of the record that makes me wonder how well I’ve come to understand it at all. I like thinking that maybe I’ve only begun.

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Given the vagaries of web pages and link rot, it occurred to me that I should append a copy of the words Al wrote on behalf of Skeletons at the Feast back when the album was in its funding stage, before the words are gone forever:

Greetings friends and strangers.

Dark times are upon us again, I know. Sorrow and exhaustion surround us. The bad men are in the ascendant and seem to have us, and the sun sets on ruins of one kind or another. But it is, de profundis, from the depths, that we sing. For me this means to create. And to keep on creating until my time runs out. If I stop to dally or rest, I am wasting time and wasting the best part of myself. 

It is true that alcohol slowed me down, but I am two years out of the bottle, and I have no plans to crawl back inside. Illness stopped me in my tracks, but I have jumped out of my sick bed. Delusion and depression too have pecked at my liver, but I shall grow another and creating is how I will do it. William Blake sang, “How can a bird that is born for joy, sit in a cage and sing?” Words and tunes are upon me. Good lord, song is upon me! The dancing plague of 1518 is upon me! Fetch me down my old guitar. Roll me to that broken piano – let me hit the keys bent hell for leather. 

I’ve got 18 or so new songs and I need to get into the studio with my ragtag army and record a new ragtag album for these ragtag times. “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.” I have always tried to be bold with my work and now I am asking for aid. Seek and ye shall find. Ask and ye shall be given. Squeaky wheel catchee monkey. Even Indiana Jones had to take a leap of faith to get across the invisible bridge to see that old knight. 

So, is there a knot at the end of the rope? Do we have a snowball’s chance in hell? Is there a giant snake hiding in the river? Will it rain after the drought? For me there is only one way to find out. It is time, as Whitman wrote, to unscrew the locks from the doors and then the doors themselves from the jambs. I don’t mean to sound flippant, but things are quite serious sirs and madams. I am Lassie and there is trouble at the old mill. Please buy lemonade at my lemonade stand. Get in this little red toy wagon and let me pull you up and down the street - it may not seem much, but it will get you there. 

(Back to: A Personal Canon)

Al Joshua from way long ago...

"Francis Bacon said he wanted his paintings to assault the viewer’s nervous system, and so return them back to life and consciousness more violently. I’m just trying to do that for myself. I’m looking for images and sounds that fray my nerves. Disturb, confuse and provoke myself is exactly what I want to do. Because it wakes me up and brings me back to life. And if it does this for me, then it will for a few other people too. Out of twenty people, nineteen might not like us, but for one person it will ring out like the right note being played in the right room and suddenly resonating."

(from an early 2009 interview preserved online. Orphans & Vandals were playing live but the album wasn't even out yet ... speaking of albums that at this point are out: remember, Skeletons at the Feast)

The baffled explorer's springtime report

In the past twelve months, I’ve had the good fortune of finding my way to not one, not two, not even three or four, but five brilliant songwriters. In a great year I make two such discoveries, tops.

In the case of Pain of Salvation’s Daniel Gildenlöw, I had an overdue awakening to the excellence of an artist I’d long treated with skepticism. I’ve detailed my road into Daniel’s arms elsewhere, but I want to note that watching the long and beautiful documentary series I Set Myself on Fire, which covers the making of Road Salt and some of the touring done on its behalf, helped. In it, Daniel is vulnerable, honest, funny, charismatic. The devotion to band and craft that he displays helped me learn to respect the albums I don’t love (the early stretch, up to and mostly including 2004’s “BE”), but sheer awe overcomes me once that dedication collides with music I can’t really imagine sounding better than it does, or being better-written than it is (2007’s Scarsick on).

Then there's Ragnar Zolberg, who co-wrote the music on Pain of Salvation’s In the Passing Light of Day. Before his stint in Daniel’s band, Ragnar had a power-pop group called Sign (with an excellent so-far-final album, Hermd, in 2013) and a darker, quieter, more ruminative solo career. He continued to put out albums while he served as Daniel’s second/lead guitarist in Pain of Salvation, and so he has gone on doing—modestly, without fanfare—since leaving. As my journey through his discography has revealed, it’s all gold, from 2008’s The Circle (Darker Side) right through to last year’s Forest Lovesongs and Hjartastjaki.

Ragnar writes and sings with a fearlessness and directness that won my heart at once, and I really mean at once. Of Artistry, the first solo song of his I tried, had me captivated, in disbelief, before my first listen to it was over. His songs have made me cry God knows how many times. If it was from Neil Young that I learned how powerful an “unvarnished heart on sleeve” approach to lyricism and delivery can be, Ragnar revealed how vast and deep that kingdom really is. 

I was shown more of the kingdom when, a few months later, a list of music recommendations by Colleen Kinsella of Big Blood included the Yoko Ono albums Fly, Approximately Infinite Universe, and Feeling the Space. Big Blood’s 2017 album The Daughters Union is dedicated to Yoko, and on 2020’s Do You Wanna Have a Skeleton Dream?, 11-year-old Quinnisa, the band’s occasional third member and perennial firebrand, named Yoko Ono alongside Joan of Arc as someone who “changed the century.” Colleen’s 2022 list got me investigating the individual albums, whereby I learned that Fly and Approximately Infinite Universe are double albums. It’s usually when I discover that some intriguing artist I’ve been investigating has made a double album that I commit to giving them, and it, a proper try. So with Yoko. By the end of Side A of Approximately Infinite Universe, my mind was in splinters. By the end of Side B I was completely won over.

That was autumn. Come winter, I fell in turn to Richard Dawson, having stumbled on the cover art to The Ruby Cord in the week of its release and gazed at it awhile in that "Oh, right on!" kind of way. Reading up, I learned it was a double album. Alright then. I also realized that I had previously read intriguing reviews of Dawson releases (Peasant, Henki), and played a track or two each time, but things hadn’t clicked. Time to try again, because reviews of The Ruby Cord (mixed reviews, no less) made it sound phenomenal. And it was. I started with The Fool. Loved it. Went on listening in order. Loved the gentle Museum and especially its poignant, level-toned catalogue of the photographs on display. I was floored by the next song up, The Tip of an Arrow, with its gorgeous Joe Hisaishi-esque verses and unabashedly heavy metal (via folk) refrains. And the album closed with a song that made me think of Big Big Train. I think the sequence of my thoughts about the Big Big Train/Horse and Rider connection would have gone something like this: "How could that even...? What?! Too good!!!"

So then of course it was right back to Track 1, the 41-minute, LP-length opener, Disc 1 of a double album in the form of a single song: The Hermit. One of the best songs ever, as it turns out: a story that starts with a dream, awakes into the quotidian and not exactly lonely present, gazes backwards in a long and riveting, mostly a capella flashback, and concludes with a holy vision of the bloody center of life, suffering, and death.

Research showed that Richard Dawson has a band (Hen Ogledd) with, ahem, a double album (Free Humans). The album opens with the wild and evocative masterpiece Farewell (those lyrics, good lord! I mean, the thermal baths? and the sadness! and the bassline!). What exit did I have? And Crimson Star? "We were naked! We were naked!" But while those were both primarily Richard compositions, the contributions of his bandmates proved that, evidently, they were mad geniuses as well. Thus on, also, to Bulbils...

And now, with a mere month to go before my awakening to the splendor of Gildenlöw and Zolberg turns a year old, the doors of a fifth hidden palace have opened to receive me, and here I am, already a diehard fan of Magnolia Electric Co. How did I not find, and fall for, Jason Molina earlier?! Greatness always seems blindingly obvious after the fact. How, I wonder afterwards, could there have been a time when I was into Neil Young and Bob Dylan, but not yet into Brian Eno? How could I have spent so long adoring the Frusciante-helmed Red Hot Chili Peppers albums without delving into his solo discography? And how is it that, given my already multi-year interest in the generation of songwriters born in the 1970s, I found my way to the likes of Chadwick Stokes, Ned Collette, and James Jackson Toth, even (through the Vic Chesnutt/Undertow Orchestra connection—though I also, unwittingly, saw him drumming for Monsters of Folk at their Beacon Theatre concert in 2009) brushing up against Molina collaborator Will Johnson, but skipped ignorantly past the lighthouse that is Molina himself?

But all to its rightful season, of course. If you gathered every pearl on your first plunge, where would you find the time to live with your discoveries, to learn from them, to be nurtured and hallowed and remade by them? It would be like trying to enjoy the gentle, patient rolling of a mountain stream when you’re standing under a waterfall.

Skeletons at the Feast 2/17/23

On this February day, a new Al Joshua record has come. It is called Skeletons at the Feast and it's 75 minutes long, which makes it proper double-LP length: a full four-sided affair, beautifully sequenced. Buy it on Bandcamp and get the FLACs, or stream it if you must, but listen. Be lifted, be muddied, be purified, be puzzled. In any case, listen. Listen to it in full, listen to it often, listen to it carefully, then listen to it again. Let your memories, your thoughts, your sleeping, your dreaming, your waking, your walking melt into Al's melodies and words, into the shimmer and cacophony of the band. Just listen. Let it take root in you as it has, and as it yet will, in me. 

"Finally awake. This time really, truly, completely awake."