King Hannah
Big Swimmer

At the end of a long journey, you bring everything back home, what you had with you at the start and what came along the way.

And if the Clash returned to London from New York with "Sandinista!", King Hannah return to Liverpool with "Big Swimmer".

"Sandinista!" was a monumental album, "Big Swimmer" is a monumental album, if this first quarter of the new century can be defined as an era.

It matters little that monumental albums are also often revolutionary and conflictual — the first Presley, Dylan's electric transition, the alien Hendrix and any Stooges up to the Clash's triple somersault — apparently "Big Swimmer" has less than nothing of the revolutionary and conflictual, anchored instead to the practice of a solidly guitar-based rock that owes everything to Neil Young and an idea of sharing typical of blues and jazz, before it was free.

Stories from sixty years ago, in any case.

King Hannah share nothing but their everyday life, and they do so by telling small, trivial stories, as banal as and more than my own, because once the spotlight is off, even the rock star stops shining.

They could be yet another incarnation of the misfit who shares their own nothingness on Facebook and Instagram.

For their and my fortune, they're assisted by the talent that makes those small and banal stories a poem.

Because yes, Hannah inviting me to dinner in the kitchen and apologizing for burning the chicken, having been enraptured by a John Prine song on the radio, and apologizing again and again for ruining my evening, now has for me the same artistic dignity as a Dylan intent on telling me about the varied crew passing along Desolation Row or a Smith proudly claiming that Jesus died for someone else's sins, certainly not theirs.

The lyrics written by Hannah and Craig are beautiful, in their skeletal and essential linearity like logical analysis exercise in the primer, and Hannah is an unparalleled narrator, half Nico chanteuse with Velvet Underground half Carolyn “Morticia Addams” Jones.

For Hope Sandoval and PJ Harvey, you need to rewind the tape a couple of years.

Anyway, speaking of revolutions made with songs, one thing I learned forty years ago is that if I want to make a revolution, I start that revolution at home, better if in front of the bathroom mirror.

It's just my feeling, but King Hannah is a revolutionary group and "Big Swimmer" a "political" album as much or more than any album played by Rage Against The Machine.

Full stop.

________________________________________________________________________________

Two years ago "It’s Me And You, Kid" closed "I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me" as best as it could, an acoustic introduction that then flowed into a vortex of electricity and monotony, King Hannah played at being the Loop, sacrificing noise for melody, with a background organ that was and still is one of the most beautiful things heard in recent years and that distorting guitar that vanished crackling and closed the dances but left good feelings for the future.

“Big Swimmer” begins exactly from there, like a friend you meet again after a few years of separation and you can't help but encounter with pleasure the "how we were" and the "where we left off": a beautiful acoustic beginning – for those interested, some of King Hannah's acoustic performances are available on YouTube, really beautiful – Hannah, ramonesque tennis shoes paired with an elegant shocking red dress, in just under two minutes gives a small lesson in basic philosophy about will, goals, and moral law that I grasp far better than what the professor tried to instill in me regarding such ideas of Immanuel Kant – was it Springsteen who argued that you learn more from a two-minute song than from twenty years spent sitting behind a school desk, right? – Craig enters, drawing a riff as easy to memorize as it is effective in its lyrical electricity, then again an acoustic outfit for the finale, a prelude to quiet and noise that will continue to chase each other in much of the album.

And a companion to discover, Sharon Van Etten.

Anyway, I'm home, I recognize the neighborhood, the sensations are familiar, King Hannah has returned to give me another forty minutes of excellent emotional vibrations.

Then Hannah and Craig invite me to dinner – Hannah intends to prepare her renowned roast chicken – they've just returned from a long journey in the United States and have many things to tell, what they did and saw, how they have changed.

Because, when you return from a long journey, you bring everything back home but, inevitably, something in you has changed. Especially if you return from New York, fresh from a long tour of concerts in the United States, up until two years ago you were serving tables in a hole in a Liverpool suburb, but thank God the boss fired you because he couldn't stand artistic types like you and also because deep down he had sensed that you would make it. "New York, Let's Do Nothing", King Hannah has changed, quite a bit too.

Hannah and Craig put the kid to bed, the chicken is in the oven, we move to the living room, they warn me not to make too much noise and start whispering their stories.

About a mattress floating on water, almost seeming to fly, it's not a surfboard, it's a mattress, I understand little, maybe they had been drinking. Then I recall the mattress by the roadside and the indifferent passing and convince myself that there is no difference between the village where I live and New York, apart from a few million heads and a few thousand abandoned mattresses.

This is nothing.

"Are you ready to hear the rest?" whispers Hannah, looking toward the door of the room where the kid sleeps.

Hannah stops singing, she speaks, or rather tells stories.

And in twenty minutes, those between "Milk Boy" and "Lily Pad," she starts telling stories that I'm so accustomed to feel unease and discomfort, the guy who throws a hammer at a kid in the street and then bursts out laughing — it's true, already sung, from Johnny Cash to Electric Peace, but it was different — violence and arrogance sold as daily spectacle, metropolitan and consumerist alienation.

Then don't be surprised if for someone, and it's always one too many, "Bowling for Columbine" and "Elephant" are just movies.

And two companions to meet again, Bill Callahan and the Slint.

We move to the kitchen.

Hannah starts singing again, together with Craig.

A dear friend, Davey, says that even if you’ve returned to your safe home, that unease and discomfort will accompany you for a good stretch of the road, then they’ll tire of your determination and leave you in peace.

There are many peddlers of basic philosophy that can change your life, even at fifty, do you know John Prine?

Heard the name, and that's it.

We turn on the radio, shortly there’s a special about him, let’s listen together, it'll do you good as it does us.

________________________________________________________________________________

It ended with a burnt chicken, eaten with gusto, and the promise to bring something by John Prine into my home.

And thanks, always, to the peddlers of small simple truths too simple to be accepted like Davey, Craig, and Hannah.