Daniel Higgs
Ancestral Songs

"I love these living rags I wear"...

"Ancestral Songs" (2006, Holy Mountain - 6 tr) is a land without time or dimension, a place suspended between avant-folk and psychedelia that seems to arise from the most distant and archaic American tradition.

Forty-four minutes marked by a mystical and simultaneously primitive, noble and wild, vital and funereal breath. An acoustic guitar, a banjo, and a jew's harp accommodate the moods of a restless and quirky musician such as Daniel Higgs, ex(?) leader and poetic declaimer in Lungfish, a historic post-punk band from Dischord, who in the last decade embarked on an interesting solo career steeped in the sounds of the old Delta, far, however, from any stereotype. Higgs uses the instruments in an almost primitive, corporeal way, tearing notes from the guitar like a shaman draws blood in a ritual sacrifice, avoids meticulous recording systems, often records with heavy saturation and brutally lo-fi. This results in music that lives on strong contrasts, raw and refined, ramshackle and composed at the same time.

The opening, bleak, of "Living In Kingdom Of Death" is the masterpiece of the entire album. The track proceeds by magnificent inertia between slow and dry arpeggios of acoustic guitar and a voice that sneaks in psalm-like, telling its religious obsessions, salvific and redemptive aspirations. The intricate and sinuous banjo harmonies of "Thy Chosen Bride" and the deep drone of the raga "Are You Of The Body?" evoke the spirit of the tutelary deity John Fahey of whom Higgs seems to possess the same curiosity in wanting to experiment across genres. The Baltimore musician chooses, however, a path of extreme minimalism, almost excruciating in wanting to strip the real and show its carcass. In this regard, listen to the skeletal "Moharsing And Schoenhunt", the most eccentric episode of the entire work, a limping journey through toy piano keys pounded with obtuse vehemence and abrasive jew's harp sounds.

Higgs' are apparently songs made of nothing but possess an intense visionary charge: a songwriting and execution entirely personal that convey the idea of a man speaking of himself, his intimacy and spirituality ("Time-Ship Of The Demogorgon").

Difficult, extremely bitter, and unsettling, "Ancestral Songs" is the album that the post Swans Michael Gira (reformed and soon, it seems, back on the scene with new work) was never able to release.

An album of absolute charm.