On my last review I was hankering
for some new music (I am insatiable in this regard) and so Sunday found me
downtown buying a few albums. Three of them are new releases: Frank Turner’s “Be
More Kind,” Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer,” and Eleanor Friedberger’s “Rebound.”
I also got my one remaining album from the “Best of 1978” records I’ve been
searching for with the purchase of Devo’s “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”
At some point we’ll return to all
these records, when the dice gods decide it is time. Let’s see what they chose
for me now…
Disc 1136 is… Sillion
Artist: Johnny
Flynn
Year of Release: 2017
What’s up with the Cover? I have no idea. Is that some
broken piece of statuary? A crude stone carving of a cat or maybe a turtle?
How I Came To Know It: I was in the record store
searching for Johnny Flynn’s 2008 album “A Larum” but saw this one instead. I
was keen to have some Johnny Flynn in my collection so I threw caution to the
wind and bought “Sillion” without ever having heard a song off of it.
How It Stacks Up: I have recently been able to find “A Larum”
(it wasn’t easy) and now have two Johnny Flynn albums. Of the two I’ll put “Sillion”
in second place.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
Johnny Flynn is a South African born, English folk
singer with a timeless delivery that would be equally at home in 1518 as 2018. “Sillion”
is his fifth studio album and shows that a decade into his weird and wonderful
career, he is still pushing the envelope of the traditional forms of folk
music.
I had to look it up, but the definition of “Sillion”
is “the thick, voluminous, and shiny soil
turned over by a plow.” It is an evocative image and one well suited to
Johnny Flynn’s fifth album, which is a mix of musical forms so old they feel like
primordial truths, newly discovered through Flynn’s artistry.
Flynn goes on about this image for some time in the
album liner notes, but the presentation feels a bit forced and affected. Fortunately
the music is anything but, digging fearlessly into some kind of fey and dreamlike
truth that you can’t fully grasp but somehow feels full of wisdom.
These tracks are more mood pieces than narratives,
with a haunted quality that draws you in and raises the hairs on your arms. It
feels like you have stumbled through the woods and come upon a troupe of Gaelic
spirits sitting up late in an abandoned and crumbling cathedral, trading songs
until they are dispelled by the dawn.
The opening track is as ghostly as it gets. “Raising the Dead” starts with a deep
echo and the faint ringing of bells, and then Flynn’s high lilt tells the tale
of the ghosts of dead relatives returning to haunt your home. It is a little
eerie, but it isn’t frightening. This is a celebration of memory and the
guidance we get from those who come before long after they are gone. Whether it
is just memory, or whether Flynn imagines the dead actually returning to
inspire us is deliciously unclear.
“Sillion” stays at this murky edge of our conscious
and unconscious minds. On “Wandering Aengus”
he sings:
“People talk of
rain, now for the pain
Now in the swing of
all the people at the gate
Call of men-folks
down in the woods, bow down to Cyprus
In the hazel wood
and wave
For the song, for
the song of Wandering Aengus”
Who is this Wandering Aengus? Is he man or faery? It
doesn’t matter. The song inspires you with the carefree joy of a walk in the
woods. You might lose yourself there for a while and see strange sights out of
the corner of your eye, but no serious harm will befall you.
I was never fully sure what songs were about, but
they would always fill me with restless energy. Flynn goes deep into primordial
rhythms and gets your heart fluttering in new and wonderful ways. For the most
part, he does this with traditionally Irish structures, but he is not afraid to
explore pop or jazz elements if they serve to keep you attuned to the magic and
the mystery.
The production is light on bass, which help keep Flynn’s
vocals from being overpowered. It can be a bit too tinny here and there, but
for the most part it works with the songs well. The notable exception is “Heart Sunk Hank” which is partially
recorded on an old-time Voice-o-Graph machine. I don’t know what the
fascination is with these things lately (Neil Young did a whole album on one
for “A Letter Home” (reviewed very negatively at Disc 850), but it needs to stop. They were
a nifty novelty in 1945, but the sound quality was crap then, and it’s crap now.
This is the exception, however. For the rest of the
record it has an old school quality to the sound, but not to the point where it
sacrifices quality. And besides, nothing can steal the dreamy magic of “Sillion”
away for long. Flynn’s lilting vocals clamber about these songs with a restless
and elfin quality that makes you nervous he’s a changeling and if you listen
too long he’s going to steal you away to faerie land forever. At least the
music will be good.
Best
tracks: Raising
the Dead, Wandering Aengus, Barleycorn, In the Deepest, The Landlord
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