Thinking about Chicago: part two
Jackie Lynn (photo: Evan Jenkins)/Cheer-Accident (photo: Vilma Jovaisa)
Reaching for Indigo by Haley Fohr’s Circuit Des Yeux was one of my favorite recordings of 2017, and in the years since its release the music has not only stayed with me, but it has grown more resonant. From my perspective Fohr’s creative development has often seemed meteoric. In 2013 I caught a solo opening set for Bill Callahan at the Alhambra Palace in Chicago that got under my skin, mostly in a negative way. Fohr was testing the limits of her extraordinary voice and she didn’t seem in control of it. But she was grappling with its possibilities, and in within a few years she began to figure things out, and her subsequent growth has been nothing short of breathtaking, in part because she’s rejected complacency. Her work is a constant act of growth and experimentation, and I still don’t see any kind of ceiling for her.
When she dropped the eponymous Jackie Lynn record for Thrill Jockey in 2016 I was initially put off, puzzled by the need for such a young artist to explore an alter ego. I came around and understood that Fohr was using a fictional character as a powerful tool to craft a specific context to write songs within, and I was reminded of my earlier confusion when I first heard the recent follow-up Jacqueline (Drag City). The ersatz electro-country sound of the first record has been remade into sleek disco-pop and the former small-town-girl-turned-big-city-drug-dealer cowboy is now a “femme” long-haul trucker. In an interview with Aquarium Drunkard Fohr explains that she realized there was something inauthentic about adapting the cowboy persona, and the hours spent driving while on tour made her feel more empathetic towards a truck driver. The songs on the new record ditch the seedy circumstances of the debut for an almost fizzy kind of self-determination, at least on the single “Casino Queen,” in which the pump-and-cape-wearing narrator embraces the power of positive thinking as she rides elevator to gamble in a casino in an unnamed American town that’s surely not Las Vegas or Atlantic City. Other songs meditate on the therapeutic value of long, solitary drives, the confidence instilled by an article of clothing, the metaphysical consequences of a particular action, or the crushing poverty of rural America.
Fohr’s narratives are loose and metaphoric, but I find her singing and the arrangements more compelling than the words. As with the first Jackie Lynn album Fohr collaborated with the members of Bitchin Bajas (Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan, and Rob Frye) to sculpt the arrangements, with a retro sound that recalls Giorgio Moroder, Blondie, and the Cars, and on first blush I found them a bit underwhelming if well made. Compared with the sound of Circuit Des Yeux they are decidedly plastic and stiff, but repeated exposure brought out subtle details—sweetly snaking guitar leads of guest Ben Chasny that interleave the rhythmic churn of “Shugar Water,” the lush string quartet that suffuses the second half of the woozy rhythm box balladry of “Dream St.,” which you can check out below, or the post-Kraftwerk bedroom funk of “Diamond Glue.” As with the first record, I’ve enjoyed this one more and more with each additional spin, even if it doesn’t come close to the richness and ambition I’ve hear in Circuit Des Yeux. But then I have to remind myself that Fohr is using Jackie Lynn for specific purposes and that it’s simply one project in an expanding portfolio. I’m excited for more, including some documentation of her amazing solo voice performances, but I’m happy to have this for now.
Cheer-Accident has transformed itself and its sound more times that I can count since it played its first show in 1987 (although the band formed back in 1981)—toggling between cheeky prog rock, art-pop, noise, and hard rock in endless admixtures. Change is almost the group’s only constant next to founding member Thymme Jones and early guitarist Jeff Libersher. Last summer the group self-released its 20th album on vinyl—eschewing any digital platform—with a title tweaking the rote naming convention of another veteran combo from the city, with Chicago XX, delicately laid out in frayed terrycloth on the cover. I didn’t get around to writing about the recording at the time, but with its wider release in late February on Cuneiform, which has issued the band’s last few albums, I’m happy to do so now. While it may not necessarily break radical ground, it stands as one of the group’s most tuneful, focused, and concise efforts.
I’ve never been a great adherent of progressive rock and I remain largely ignorant of touchstones like early Genesis or King Crimson, while simultaneously digging the whole Henry Cow/RIO scene. But none of that has prevented me from loving Chicago XX. The album opener “Intimacy” collides a needling, siren-like lead guitar lick, a crisply stuttering beat, and a wonderful chorus of massed oboes (all played by Amelie Morgan, yet another musician that’s part of the ever-evolving cast of collaborators) sashaying behind Jones’ slightly creepy, theatrical articulation of Scott Rutledge’s typically dystopian lyrics. “Like Something to Resemble”—embedded below—follows like a transmission from the 70s, with a hooky melody and even better, soaring chorus, all of which I could imagine blaring from tinny radios inside the rusty hot rods in the suburban neighborhood of my childhood, but there’s no excess (not even the multi-tracked trumpet lines blown by Jones). Like all eight tracks on the record, the arrangements are both exquisite and lean. “Diatoms” trips between sleek jazz-pop, noise, and hard rock in less than three delirious minutes.
Even when the prog hallmarks surface—the unctuous crooning by Greg Beemster on “Life Rings Hollow,” and the song’s attendant synthesizer riff, which sounds like it was purloined from an Alan Parsons record, or the tempo-shifting and the aggravating sing-song quality in parts of “Plea Bargain”— I find the execution so sharp, the sensibility so self-effacing and the melodies so gorgeous I hardly notice. Maybe it’s time for me to spend some quality time with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway? I don’t think so—Chicago XX requires no special training.
Today’s playlist:
Benedicte Maurseth/Berit Opheim/Rolf Lislevand/Håkon Mørch Stene, Tidekverv (Heilo)
Dustin Carlson, Air Ceremony (Out of Your Head)
Aviva Endean, Cinder: Ember: Ashes (Sofa)
Noah Preminger, Genuinity (Criss Cross)
Cat Power, Wanderer (Domino)
