Gus Black
Today Is Not The Day To Fuck With Gus Black

Gus Black must have had a really shitty day to title his fifth album this way. Listening to these twelve songs, one can sense it. And it wasn't just a single day.

Dark, ghostly, introverted, at times funereal, "Today Is Not The Day" is a masterful example of noir folk. Suspended between Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads" and "The Boatman's Call," it is an album to listen to at night, with the lights off, as a counterpoint to a solitary evening, among some bottles of wine and a book in which a threatening projection of one's self resides.

The voice of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter is black and deep; it has a medicinal taste. Those of the two choristers who constantly accompany the songs, like guardian angels (or demons?), are haunting and hypnotic. However, the atmosphere of the album is not theatrically aggressive, as one might infer from the rather boastful cover, but, on the contrary, melancholic and sweet, or at most, abysmal, ataraxic.

Only a couple of songs feature percussion. Among these stands out "Love Is A Stranger," a true gem of the album, whose unusually rich arrangement for the album's standards (glockenspiel, organ, classical guitar) gives it a truly touching fullness and intensity.

Elsewhere, nudity predominates: guitar and voice, very often, or a little more, with the interwoven voices weaving the pieces together. "Can We Talk About This Tomorrow?" unravels chilling everyday acridities ("can we talk about this tomorrow, I’ve made plans to meet my assistant") in two minutes of pure poetry; "Silent Films" meanders through a delightfully sad fingerpicking amid scenes of light and depression ("you come to the silent films ‘cause you can’t yet find the pills").

It is an almost autistic album, muted, paralyzed, that knows no outburst and rage. The tone of voice is always maniacally controlled, and the arpeggios remain clean, only slightly pathological in some pieces ("Variations On A Theme Called Honesty", "Hurrah Hurrah Hurrah, Hurray Hurray", chilling). Despair is seated and caressed with a knife.

Certain albums resonate with you, just like that, without a reason. Especially with the albums of the night. They become companions. Shelters to which one is entitled. "In contemporary society, a human life necessarily has one or more periods of crisis, of intense personal questioning. So it is normal and right to have access, in the center of a large city, to at least one venue open all night" (M. Houellebecq). And to an album by Gus Black.