33 rebellions per minute
1999
Efatha, THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
One charming and unexpected side benefit of running a review site is that, once in a while, some musician decides that my endorsement might be worth something, and sends me free music. This could in theory be a bad thing, since I feel obligated to listen closely to anything I'm sent. But nothing I've been sent so far has been worse than competent. I always feel a little guilty about the _merely_ competent: for example, I'm never going to write an essay on what a perfectly nice cross Florapop are between Jellyfish's rococo late-Beatles/ early-Queen shtick and Jason Falkner's eclectic singer/ songwriter gig when I haven't even gotten around to recommending Jellyfish (start with SPILT MILK) or Jason (AUTHOR UNKNOWN), who are frankly much more talented. On the other hand, as of today, fully six of the freebies have earned reviews from me. And for better or okay, it's generally clear why the artists looked at my page and thought I'd care.
In other words, Efatha are the only band yet who scanned my list of favorites and muttered "Yes, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols - arrrh, there's a mensch who'll truly appreciate an album of sad pseudo-Irish folk that starts with a 2:25 viola solo". Scott Hertzog writes the songs, plays acoustic guitar at low but safe difficulty levels, and sings like a young Elvis Costello trying to be the Irish Old Bob Dylan. Christine Lafferty plays viola. On the majority of the tracks, that's it. And it's as unhurried and astonishingly graceful an album as I've heard all year.
"Hymn Of Solitude", the viola solo, is calm, pretty, and developed enough in its tune to not lose my interest in its modest time span. "Christopher's Moon", earnest and myth-spinning, could be a Cat Stevens song, especially with its almost mandolin-ish sparkle a la the solo in "Tuesday's Dead". "Memories Of The Waterfall", another instrumental (half the songs are) is delicately sketched from individual notes. "Please Jesus Sir" is rushed and lyrically simple in the wondering manner of a man who will bother to be eloquent and metaphorical _after_ he's figured out enough about religion and purpose that he's sure, at least, of the exact nature of his questions. "Cliffs Of Moher" sustains itself almost entirely on one guitar chord repeated in a simple rhythic pattern, with a viola melody providing enough tension and structure to navigate the 2:08 with success. "Miracle Called Free" has at least two chords, and I think I'd bet even-odds money that there's a third or even fourth chord there, but Hertzog has mastered of art of extreme unspectacularness in his chord changes, like a pianist who moves just one finger and keeps the other notes steady. Paced by slow, note-at-a-time synthesizer washes, the songs plays what Mephisto Waltz might've had their roots run deeper into the soil than into the pages of Interview With A Vampire. The first hundred seconds of "Taith I Net" unfold with even more measured gravity, reminding me less of anything in rock or folk than of Forrest Fang's modern/ancient Chinese synthesis WORLD DIARY in its Debussy-ish note progressions and its solemn, reverent use of space; but then the pennywhistle kicks cheerily in, and the rest could be one of the Pogues' ethnically confused grab-bags, with first gypsies, then Joan Baez, slipping their influence into the Irish melody.
"Charades", an inquiry on social roles as masks, strums along to the chords of Blue Oyster Cult's "Career Of Evil", which is as clear an example as anyone could want of how a stolen chord change is not, even slightly, even in the vaguest most spiritual sense, a stolen song. "Saint Mary's Street" is how Tom Petty's "Free-Fallin" would've come out if he'd added a tambourine after the first verse, scratched his head, and decided "I think that's already as close to overproduction as I can afford". "Sailor's Jig" is a jig, albeit a semi-downcast one that has to be being performed at sea, several weeks away from the next shore leave. "Monkey", pushed along by percussive strumming and actual drums, seems to adopt a lecture tone for its fiercely delivered charges that "School rationalizes/ TV desensitizes". But he's really not out for anything fiercer than a useful method for solving the problem that "we are a people full of imperfection, trust no-one/ yet we must trust someone"; and the viola is at its prettiest moment yet. "Masterpiece" could be an unplugged rendition of a Silencers or In Tua Nua song, and while the fact that those bands were inauthentic (but good) '80's Big Music expansions of Irish folk gives "Masterpiece" the same feel as text that's been translated via computer from English to Russian and back, the results here aren't funny, merely thought-provoking, an anthem delivered intriguingly wrong. "Rain Fall Down", urgent and throaty, is blessed by the most instantly likeable melody of the album proper; slow it down and add harmony parts and it could be a Peter, Paul, and Mary classic.
For reasons beyond my ken, the most immediate songs on the album are granted status as unlisted bonus tracks. All three have bass/drums rhythm section, which never even seemed noticeably lacking on the 14 prior tracks that didn't use them. Track 15's bass is eerie, just audible in a quiet (too quiet) way, and the frantic chorus is a political sing-along that edges into love song territory. The sprightly track 16, with an actual backbeat even, is a love song that keeps the world commentary unofficial: "Let my love for you… carry me far far away" takes actual listening for nuance to notice that the "far far away" seems to be the priority (or you could cheat by reading the liner note thanks to "the Teamsters and Millersville University for providing the anguish needed to write these songs"). Track 17 brings in guest vocalist Kristin Anselmo, who has a wavery yet strong and articulate leading-lady voice any Broadway show could use. At least we learn what Efatha songs could be with a real singer: very nice.
But what truly impresses me about Efatha is how they manage to create songs where whichever elements are lacking (good singing, drums, poetry, power chords, speed, yodeling) are out-of-earshot, out-of-mind. THIS IS WHAT YOU GET is a simple record, but an admirably self-contained one. Hertzog may wonder and agonize at all the things he doesn't know, but he scripts songs for the things that he and Lafferty are strikingly good at. For an hour, at least, those are the only things that have to count.
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET can be ordered at
http://www.kspace.com/artists/music/efatha/order.phtml.
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