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Rating: A black and white album.
It naturally reflects the cinematic style of Jarmusch. But, although you can listen to this album like a soundtrack, it is not a normal soundtrack. Disorienting, experimental, smoky, unconventional, arrhythmic. Difficult.
On first listen, you completely immerse yourself in this continuous flow of images underscored now by an alto sax (played by Lurie himself) now by a viola. The entire work consists of many small sequences that transport us to various environments, always different, bizarre.
But let's start with the last track (comprised, in turn, of four "sub-tracks") where the protagonist is the spirit of Albert Ayler resurrected by Lurie himself. Ayler, in the '60s, was a free-jazz musician who sparked much debate during that period. It is a long, intense, minimal, confused track but, at the same time, disorienting, a livid chiaroscuro of a contemporary underground reality. The absence, the lack of communication, the solitude. These are presences, at least from my point of view, important in this album (as, for example, in "Car Cleveland"). "Bella By Barlight", on the other hand, is dry and essential, seeming to underline the light but fearful walking of a mature woman at night, skirting the river, remembering. And when you reach "The Good And The Happy Army" your room will begin to fill with unsettling presences, the ghosts of your consciousness, feelings of guilt. Because John Lurie's music is intimate music, digging deep into the soul, free, without schemes, bare, sparse, anarchic. This album is certainly not well played but it is interesting both for what it represents (in other words, we can classify it within the No Wave movement, a break from the break) and for what it communicates to us.
In short, it is music made of art, essential, that breaks the patterns of punk and jazz without seeking classification. It is music that lends itself to multiple listens, each time evoking different and mystical atmospheres. Obsessive.
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