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Valet, "Blood is Clean"
I remember hearing a supposed "recording from hell" on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio program years ago and upon hearing the latest project from Honey Owens (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nudge), I was immediately reminded of those apparently satanic vibrations. Blood is Clean isn't particularly vicious, tormented, or evil in character, but Owens' ghostly voice and hazy songs on this record are uniquely haunting.
Kranky
The sixth of April is associated with a number of events throughout history: the earliest recorded solar eclipse in 648 BC is attributed to this day, Petrarch's first vision of Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon also occurred on April the sixth, it was the day that the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, and it happens to be the day that Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole. "April 6" is Valet's introduction to the world and it's probably helpful to think of each of these events as analogues of a sort to this record. Honey Owens is at her best on her Kranky debut, ushering alien and mystical sounds out of her mind and into the air, converting submerged rhythms into occult ritual, and turning out songs bathed in unquiet isolation and immutable violence. The supernatural are at work, conforming Owens' hands to a position reserved for an afterlife blues and shaping her lips into coded messages for the dead and the devils.
"April 6" opens with her spectral voice moaning wordless sounds into the air and is closely followed by ceremonial drums and tumbling winds. The sound of errata blow about in this storm of sound slowly closes the track, leaving an uneasy feeling in my belly and arousing suspicions about what might follow. Owens could've led the record down a predictably bombastic path at this point, rendering "April 6" nothing more than a prolonged tease in anticipation of some outward explosion. Instead, "Blood is Clean" converts all the stock piled tension into an internal hemorrhage, a whirlpool of fuzzed out guitars and rumbling bass. Her lyrics bring to mind no immediate ideas, but rather vague hallucinations of symbols and emotions that seem equally inviting and disconcerting. The guitar solo on "Blood is Clean" is perhaps one of the most phenomenal things I've heard all year. It tumbles out of the mix and practically destroys the rest of the song and pictures of war-torn landscapes or fire-scarred cities slowly evolve out of the music. It's a moment of musical and sonic brilliance, setting the tone for the rest of the record and completely erasing whatever preconceptions I might have had concerning Owens' music.
The whole of the album isn't quite as structured as "Blood is Clean;" songs like "Burmajuana" and "Tame All the Lions" sound less like songs and more like slowly evolving pictures that never quite acquire enough definition to become recognizable. Even when Owens sings, her voice is so removed and cold that it's hard to imagine it as an intentional part of the recording. It mixes well with the music, but instead of providing any order to the songs, it increases their apparitional qualities and further distances them from reality. They're elegant songs that evolve patiently, even if they don't immediately bring to mind traditional song structures. That is, perhaps, the stroke of artistry that sets Blood is Clean apart from the pack. So often artists will pretend to play with the idea of the song, stretching it beyond its classical limits either by destruction or some lesser form of decay. Owens' own approach maintains the artistry of song-craft and simultaneously expands its horizons.
By fluctuating between abstract and concrete music she creates a bizarre tension that's both enjoyable to the mind and entertaining in general. "My Volcano" combines these two approaches almost perfectly, mimicking the sometimes wandering nature of the otherwise well-defined and structured blues and inserting the more free-form nature of modern guitar performance into that style. It's my favorite piece on the album and perhaps the best thing Owens has ever written. "North" closes the album with a blur of washed out sound, a sound that brought to mind blizzards and the harsh landscape of the planet's polar regions. In a way it's a cleansing piece of music, washing away whatever relations to the world the rest of the album established by way of metaphor. In another way it calls to mind the strange and supernatural spirit of gothic America, immersing me, along with the rest of the album, in a frame of mind partially familiar, nightmarish, and wholly intriguing.
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