The Answer Is In The Beat

His Name Is Alive megapost

July 21, 2013 at 10:46 pm | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, Warren Defever posted a few new ultra-limited His Name Is Alive releases for sale (and probably sold out immediately). I think they were leftover copies from a recent show in Arizona. If there were any recent shows in Michigan I didn’t hear about them. But I got these new releases so that’s all that matters. First up is a DVD called Cliff Bells Vanilla. It’s a live show in Detroit from November 2008, the same month I saw HNIA at the Brainwaves Festival in Cambridge, MA. This concert was also included as one of the discs in the Eclipse 10-CDr box set from 2010. I have to admit I was disappointed by that release, especially since it cost $200 and there’s no liner notes or tracklist or any information included with the discs, and only recently did I notice a tracklist posted on Discogs. I thought the music was OK, but a lot of it just sounded like rehearsals or something, not particularly exciting. I probably should revisit it though. This DVD is pretty typical of a HNIA show, it kind of shows off a range of their live performance styles: intimate chamber-folk ensemble (a cello player is onstage, although it’s hard to hear him most of the time), acid rock shredding (Warren plays the crap out of his Flying V until the strings break), garage rock (One Wolf from Wolfman Band joins the band for a cover of Destroy All Monsters’ “You’re Gonna Die”, howling and crawling around the stage and audience and breathing in peoples’ faces, and passing out tambourines and shakers, which always happens during HNIA shows), acoustic piano jazz, and more. They cover Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight”, which they did in concert a lot around that era, as well as Big Star’s “Blue Moon” (always one of my favorite songs HNIA does), and of course old classics “Cornfield”, “This World Is Not My Home”, and “Are We Still Married”. The video constantly switches between color and grainy black-and-white, and always has a shaky handheld camera feel. The DVD also includes scans of the show’s program (which includes song lyrics with incorrect/altered song titles, and also the lyrics to “I’ll Send My Face To Your Funeral”, which they didn’t actually play), and show posters. Looked like an awesome show, and it seemed to be in a pretty intimate setting, everyone was seated at restaurant tables and there doesn’t seem to be too many people in the audience. Hopefully they’ll do another show like this soon because I need to see them again.

Also released in this batch was a CDr called Home Is, which is string interpretations of HNIA’s second album, Home is In Your Head. In 2004, HNIA released a limited 10-CDr box called Cloud Box, which included a disc called Mystery Spot, which was actually string quartet arrangements of 4 songs from the first HNIA album, Livonia. This disc was also released separately as Livonia Strings. The versions on that disc take the songs “If July”, “Caroline’s Supposed Demon”, “Fossil”, and “How Ghosts Affect Relationships”, and stretch them out to over 12 minutes of breathtaking beauty each (except “Ghosts” which is under 4 minutes). The arrangements draw out the melodies of the songs so that they slowly evolve and breathe, and just elevate them to something powerful and transcendent. Home Is does something different than Livonia Strings; it’s only performed by one musician (Jean Cook, who’s played strings with HNIA since Detrola, and is also a member of Ida and many other bands), and this disc contains 8 tracks, ranging from a minute and a half to six and a half minutes. The tracks seem to fluctuate between more straightforward versions of the HIIYH material, and more liberal interpretations, or pieces that sound more like they’re inspired by the original material than direct covers. The first 2 tracks, “Blood” and “Married”, both seem to be based on “Are We Still Married”, with “Blood” being a slower intro, conveying dread with plucked strings panned across the speakers. “Married” speeds things up to the original tempo of the song, and even features a hummed version of the vocal melody. It also adds a sly new melody that adds to the song’s feelings of uncertainty and vulnerability. The track “Home” on this CDr is presumably based on the album’s title track, which is a two minute bass guitar instrumental, which sounds shot down and hopeless. This track seems to follow a similar cadence, but it’s playing something different, it’s 2 minutes longer, and it seems to go into a more hopeful direction by the end, like it’s taking the feeling of the original and uplifting it, looking upwards. Trying to resolve the feelings of doubt. “Beautiful” seems to be a straightforward cover of “Beautiful And Pointless”; in fact, it’s even clearer than the original, perfectly transcribing Karin Oliver’s vocal melodies to strings. “Pointless”, in contrast, takes the mood of the song and meditates on it for a glacial 6 minutes. “Then Winter Ends” follows, seems to be even more of a continuation of that mood, making things cold and still. “Hope” seems to be more based on the vocal melody of “Save The Birds” than “Hope Called In Sick”, which is a minute-and-a-half instrumental which starts with slow clanging bells and is violently interrupted by scorching guitar and drums. This version of “Hope” features slow, ominous plucked strings and some more hummed vocals, and a few sudden bursts, but not as sharp in contrast as “Hope Called In Sick”. “Eyes” is a multi-tracked, hazy instrumental that only barely at the end resembles the vocal melody of either “Eyes” tracks that bookend side 1 of HIIYH (well, not including the brief intro version of “Are You Coming Down This Weekend?”). “Well” further clouds and obscures HIIYH‘s “The Well” (easily one of the album’s standout tracks), not even attempting to replicate Karin Oliver’s majestic vocal performance, but keeping to a more ambient mode. Of course, I could be totally wrong about which tracks Jean Cook is trying to interpret, and what she’s trying to do with them. Her version is definitely not as schizophrenic, but it manages to bring out different elements, both light and dark.

The other new HNIA CDr is an album called Dragons Look Out Your Window, an instrumental disc recorded last year in Detroit, with Warren Defever playing guitar, analog synth and harmonium, and Cassandra Verras (who I’m pretty sure was with the band last time I saw them perform in Detroit 2 years ago) on synth and violin. This disc sees Warren diving into analog kosmische synth-drone territory, and it is AWESOME. Couldn’t be happier to hear him go in this direction with his music. No track titles, but the first one’s 12 minutes, the last one’s 10, and the rest are mostly pretty short, but it’s all calm and pretty and cosmic and meditative. It has kind of a wobbly homemade circuitry feel; sometimes it sort of vibrates the way a vinyl record does if it’s on a weak surface and you put something down on it, except I’m playing this as an MP3 right now and it’s still vibrating like that. The second track has a snowy ambient guitar Windy & Carl sound, and definitely goes well with recent White Poppy. The next two tracks have kind of robotic motorik rhythms but without beats, and then track 5 suddenly features a Beach Boys type rhythm. There’s also a flute and string-synths, giving it somewhat of an early Kraftwerk feel. Track 9 has more lush, looping guitar ambient textures. The last track is probably the darkest and bleakest, sounding like it might have even been recorded backwards, with glacial movements suddenly flaring up every so often. Awesome stuff, seriously hoping there’s more HNIA like this coming in the future.