Over the
weekend I watched a crazy art film called “Climax,” which is about a troupe of dancers
who get unknowingly dosed with LSD-laced Sangria at a party. It was a cool
movie, if you don’t mind your cinema a little experimental from time to time.
This next album
seems the natural review to follow up that experience.
Disc 1369 is…. Starmaker
Artist:
Honey Harper
Year of Release: 2020
What’s up with the
Cover?
It’s another Giant Head cover! These have really made a comeback in recent
years.
How I Came To Know
It: The
boring way. I read a review, check out the music, and liked what I heard. If it
sounds like I find music this way a lot, it’s because it is a very effective
way to discover music. But by all means, go ahead and continue to listen to the
radio so that every tenth song has you fumbling for a pen in the glove box to
write it down as you swerve through traffic.
Or I guess you could just Shazam it. Whatever.
How It Stacks Up: This is my only Honey
Harper album, so it can’t stack up.
Ratings: 3 stars
The opening song on Honey Harper’s debut sounds like it has been fed
through synthesizer at the bottom of a swimming pool. “Green Shadows”
introduces you to the record by immersing you in dreamy ambience and fuzzy
notions that are tantalizing close to understandable words. If you’re sober, it’ll
make you wonder if someone’s spiked your Sangria with LSD. If you’re already on
LSD, it’ll make you wonder if you’re hearing it correctly, and send you
scrambling for the receiver to adjust the equalizer as you wonder “Am I tripping
out, or is the song supposed to sound like this?”
Yes, yes it is. Do not attempt to adjust your amp or inspect your speaker
wire. Do not look askance at Aunt Isadora’s wine-punch. It is just the unique
sound of Honey Harper you are experiencing. There are plenty of names that come
to mind for just what it is, and I’ve heard it referred to as glam country,
cosmic country and psychedelic country.
Retreating from labels to the equally vague ground of comparisons, Honey
Harper reminded me of a more diffuse version of Chris Isaak, with maybe a side
of partially tranquilized Dwight Yoakam. Like both of them, he has a high
warble, and a musical style that makes you think of seventies crooners, updated
to a modern sensibility.
The cosmic qualities come from the dreamy qualities of these songs, which
feel like you are lost in time and space, floating without form or direction.
Harper’s vocals lilt along like a slow-moving river undulating through the contours
of your mind.
His lyrics paint splashes of vibrant colour, but it is more mood enhancer
than complex narrative. Think the emotive qualities of Monet’s “Water Lilies”,
as opposed to the sharp romanticism of Bierstadt’s “In the Mountains.” I’m usually
more of a Bierstadt guy, which made it so surprising how much I enjoyed listening
to the hazy wisdom of “Starmaker.” This record is a lot of ambient mood music,
but Harper does it so well I mostly forgive him for painting outside the lines.
I say “mostly” because there are moments on the record where he gets a
bit too pale and wan for my tastes. He can trend toward an off-handed ennui
that is vaguely sad, but lacking the focus needed for you to feel invested in
the experience. In those moments his spell is broken, and you can hear the
basic seventies melodies he’s dressed up in new clothes.
“Suzuki Dreams” is a particularly bad offender here. It is
overdressed with a flourish of strings and then falls into a maudlin tune that
had me thinking (unfavourably) of that moment in a Disney movie where the main
character is wandering through a rose garden pining that they’ll never find
love.
Also irksome was the tune to “Tired Tower” which sounded way too
similar to Gram Parson’s “In My Hour of Darkness,” only not nearly as
good, and with one too many instruments competing for space.
However, by and large the album hits more than it misses, bolstered by
late-record standouts “Tomorrow Never Comes” and “Strawberry Lite.”
If Harper loses the plot for 2-3 songs in the middle there (and he does) these
offering redeem him and remind you of how much hippy-dippy fun you were having
when it all started. “Strawberry Lite” in particular is a curiously
enjoyable blend of honky-tonk steel guitar with weird synthesizer flutters that
would be at home on a Pink Floyd record.
In a way it is unsurprising that record this dreamy would lose its own
plot part-way through and then find its way back to the path in such an
absent-minded but inevitable way. This record isn’t perfect, but it knows how
to navigate its own alien landscape. Also, it is unlike most other country
music you are going to hear in this or any other year. In the end, despite the occasionally
disorienting moment and lack of direction, I enjoyed the trip; no suspect
Sangria required.
Best tracks: In
Light of Us, The Day It Rained Forever, Tomorrow Never Comes, Strawberry Lite
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