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Rating: A question: should the Good Reviewer listen to a work en passant, quickly writing down their impressions, or should they consume it until it becomes a part of them? Well, for the album in question, I am a victim of repeated listening and am now influenced by the affection that comes from familiarity.
David Grubbs is a character with a complex and multifaceted personality, who wins you over little by little. A pianist and guitarist with an inexhaustible desire for experimentation (both acoustic and not), which takes him far from the narrow labels that have been stuck on him and which generally confine him to the macro-world of post-rock, which is experiencing a second youth just in these crowded years. But labels, we know, only serve archivists with little imagination or shelf technocrats. In short, I will try to be as honest as Grubbs' music is honest: here we are not near the usual masterpiece to be described with blows of superlative clichés (The Serpentine Similar, is notably more inspired), and if in previous works the Slint-like approach was more recognizable in the structure of the tracks, in this album one can enjoy more rarefied atmospheres in which there is essentially no room for electrified instruments but only a measured dose of electronics that contributes to building wide and subdued visions. Never melancholic.
We are facing a work that is about to reach the respectable milestone of its second decade (the album is dated 1998) and that ages well like good bottles of red wine. It's a tiny album that contains seven songs for only forty minutes of music, but much more mature than many grand-large productions. And then... the first track, The Season Reverse, is worth the price of admission alone.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 The Seasons Reverse (05:51)
September reverses and the equinoxes flip
Winter slides into Fall
When glimpsed in leaps of nine months or more
The seasons reverse
They spring back and fall forward
They reshuffle when you touch down after long intervals
September reverses and the equinoxes flip
Summer becomes Spring
The seasons reshuffle
At a span of a year and a half
September reverses and the equinoxes flip
They reshuffle when you touch down after long intervals
September reverses and the equinoxes flip
Winter slides into Fall.
They shuffle because it’s been more than two years.
First seeing you in a snowbank.
Then a sweater
And then a sweater
They reshuffle with leaps of some time
Or reshuffle with leaps of distance
They reshuffle with leaps of some time
Or reshuffle with leaps of distance.
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