Scott Kelly
The Wake

It seems that there is nothing left: the earth's surface is a wasteland of rubble, ruins of ancient and new civilizations coexist in the same desolate landscape, collapsed skyscrapers and deserts lie next to arches and colonnaded streets of ancient Rome rising on the verge of collapse, amidst the croaking of crows and the flight of vultures drawing concentric circles in the dense cloudy sky, ready to pounce on the last carcasses to devour. In the last house at the edge of the world, among walls cracked by time's action, abandonment, and forgetfulness, a man, the last man on earth, wields his guitar and releases the last shred of humanity.

It seems that under these conditions Scott Kelly, voice and guitar of Neurosis, brought to light (or rather to darkness) his second solo work, which follows his first work “Spirit Bound Flesh” by a good seven years (we are in 2008). And it becomes inevitable to draw a comparison with the work of his fellow sufferer Steve Von Till, who almost simultaneously released the superb “A Grave is a Grim Horse”. So close, yet so far, the two heralds of the post-hardcore revolution tread their parallel paths, two tracks that seem equally intent on escaping the chaos and noise of contemporaneity to develop in a strictly intimate and singer-songwriter dimension, in the most hermetic and isolationist sense we can conceive.

A path that, in truth, does not surprise too much, given the folk-psychedelic elements that have progressively infested Neurosis' poetics (one could look, for example, at an album like “A Sun that Never Sets”). So close, yet so far, as was said, because while it is true that they both arrive at the same conclusions, it is even more legitimate to find significant differences in their premises. Where Von Till maintains the grim visionary aspect, the apocalyptic mood of the mother band; where his music, although sparse and essential, focuses heavily on atmosphere, surrounding itself (though not overusing) with mournful orchestrations of strings, keyboards, and often returns to cloak itself in electricity; where Von Till stands as a resigned witness of a world on the brink of collapse, ending up taking refuge in a pristine, atavistic past, occasionally lingering on the furrows of American singer-songwriter tradition, Scott Kelly prefers to explore the depths of his own interiority, singing, searching for himself, drawing from his own humanity. Purer, more childlike, more naïve than his counterpart, with fewer pretensions in his head, clad in nothing but his own humanity. An Apocalypse that flows naturally from the soul, even before being painted with the ambitious strokes of a songwriter aware of his expressive power.

A voice and a guitar, guitar and voice, seven acoustic ballads, thirty-four minutes: these are the numbers of “The Wake”, which only on a couple of occasions is tainted by the poised electricity of a slide guitar (by Frank Sullivan), while Daemon Kelly is credited on bass, without his instrument disrupting the coordinates of a work that remains the superhuman effort of a man and his guitar. A caveman with the heart of a butterfly: Scott Kelly builds infinite inner landscapes with the sole force of his acoustic guitar and his voice, a terrible guttural groan that brings him closer to the most nicotine-stained Mark Lanegan, perhaps to the heaviest and most catacombal Michael Gira. Few other references to describe this paradoxical de-electrified post-hardcore, decidedly elementary from a formal point of view, still dominated by the massive incursions of arpeggios that were once swallowed by electric guitars (and in this Kelly remains more anchored to the neurotic essence than a Von Till who aspires to reinvent himself as a songwriter), simple in form, it was said, but superlative from an expressive point of view, so much so that we think of summoning the ghost of the lamented Nick Drake, for how the author manages to render the maximum with the minimum: and in these desolate ballads there is all the depth of a musician who has been able to change the fate of heavy music, and who for a moment decides to unplug his amplifier and give voice to his soul, naked, stripped of all the gadgets that over time technology has given shape to his talent.

Primitive music, that of the last man on earth. Despite the overwhelming and disconsolate atmospheres, the title of the album does not betray: the work indeed constitutes an awakening, the awakening of humanity after everything has ended, after everything has been swept away. After the End, a new Beginning: Humanity begins again from humanity, the humanity that lies deep in the heart, the vital impetus that knocks under the rubble and destruction. And where Steve Von Till seems to ride complacently among them, Scott Kelly takes refuge in silence, in the darkness of the last house at the edge of the world, perhaps overlooking a massive cliff where the vastness of the horizon delineates the sky from the sea... seated hunched on a decrepit wooden and straw chair, chasing, hypnotized, the creeping shadows on the peeling wall.

Rarely have I listened to an album so essential, yet boredom does not reside in this sort of apocalyptic “Pink Moon” of the third millennium. The opener “The Ladder in my Blood” anticipates and lays bare the movements of a journey that will proceed without major surprises: arpeggios and notes that linger, roam freely in silence, tear under the weight of fingers too large and dry for caresses; under the weight of a hoarse, dragging voice, too brutal to whisper lullabies, yet so expressive and gritty, expression of a soul that does not yield to despair, but almost finds serenity, liberation in being able to finally soar in the air without the ballast of a Name perhaps too cumbersome even for those who bear it. Finally, only the epic ride “Saturn's Eye” and the concluding “Remember Me” stand out, both dirtied by an enveloping slide guitar that wraps the song of an exhausted knight who this time decides to leave his weapons and horse in the stable.

Good awakening.