All of which is important to consider when introducing his new project, Wine Country. The band, which sees Kivel joined by pals Andy Aylward and John Zakoor, feels like both the pinnacle of this journey and its complete antithesis. The sound of someone arriving at their ideal destination at the exact moment they stop actively trying to get there. The liner notes for the debut Wine Country record, Hard Times, put the terms “written” and “composed” in inverted commas, a small gesture which speaks volumes. Because these are not songs finely wrought or painstakingly crafted brick by brick. Rather they just arrived, epiphany-like, Kivel a willing lightning rod struck by a bolt of pure inspiration. “[I] can’t explain how it was written or where it came from,” Kivel describes of the title track in an Instagram post. “But it felt like someone was speaking through me when I put those words together for the first time

Musically, Wine Country finds Matt Kivel at his freest. In the past he has drawn on cinema and literature, folk music and ambient music and experimental jazz. But here, in keeping with the overall vibe, things just flow where they want. Long, meandering pieces of psych-tinged art rock, improvisational lyrics that nonetheless feel charged with poetry and meaning. A testament to the value of committing to something without inhibition, and allowing the result to speak on its own terms rather than being edited and overworked beyond its proper shape. Hard Times is inspiration uncut. Not so much an attempt to communicate something otherwise incomprehensible as an embrace of the incomprehensible itself.

Hey baby we were born to die
Let’s face the facts of letting days go by
Pain don’t hurt

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The albums which followed offered various combinations of such styles, and were no less receptive to influences outside of music too. Janus looked to literature and history, while fires on the plain, inspired by the Kon Ichikawa film of the same name, not only drew from cinema but was structured something like a movie in its own right. A long journey conceptualised, where even guest appearances from the likes of Robin Pecknold and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, which on other records might have stood solely as exciting coups or Easter eggs, had structural and thematic implications. A way for Kivel to introduce new narrators. Small diversions to the main narrative in a technique echoing that of Ichikawa’s film.

Then came a pair of ambient-based albums—last night in america (Pedro Y El Lobo Records + Cascine) and that day, on the beach (PYL Records)—which leaned toward almost contemporary minimalist tones. But working counter to the meditative calm the genre often entails, last night in america painted a picture of mundane life as soundtracked by anguish and violence, exploring how the bland everyday remained bland despite the terrible things unfolding all around. “Everyone seemed to process this abstract grief so quickly,” Kivel explained at the time. “I wanted to write a record about that. It feels like a very American idea to me—that short memory, or that ability to shrug and submerge terrible feelings.”

And if last night in america asked how we managed to live in peace in spite of everything, then follow-up that day, on the beach was more concerned with whether we can live peacefully at all. Because Matt Kivel no longer wanted to partake in the national (or Western?) burial of grief, held no illusions as to the persistent influence of memories and past trauma. Instead he chose to unearth periods of intense depression throughout his own life, return to them and attempt to map their shapes through music. Therefore, if last night was a quiet protest against a national mindset, then that day was a personal living of the alternative course. A decision to not bury the past but rather submerge oneself within it.

Each record felt like its own cohesive, complete thing, yet the sense of searching continued. The journey of an individual dissatisfied with their surroundings yet unable to let go of the hope that some better, more hospitable place to call his own might eventually come into view. Recorded after moving back to Austin with his wife, bend reality ~ like a wave might be the closest Kivel has got to such a home. Stripping back the expansive style of the previous records in favour of a more intimate, insular tone, the album references the tranquility found in nature, as well as the pervading unease with messier human landscapes (what the press release calls “a deep, inner pain and grotesque sense of dislocation”), refusing to sugar-coat hard realities without abandoning faith in renewal and growth.

One of the main ways Kivel achieves this sensation is again by inviting others to sing these songs with him. Will Oldham returns on several tracks, a presence Kivel said aims to make the songs “feel more human and holy,” an almost literal reminder that, when they so choose, people can come together to make something good, something beautiful. “Vocal harmony is one of humanity’s purely positive non-destructive powers and I’m glad we could tap into it on this song,” Kivel goes on to explain, concluding the thought with a sentiment that might be said to represent the record as a whole: “The world is gravely ill and this is just a small acknowledgment that we are capable of healing if we want to.”

bend reality ~ like a wave is out now via PYL Records and you can get it from the Matt Kivel Bandcamp page.

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Tracklisting:

1. A Hospital + Crucifix Made of Plastic – Florist
2. Richmond – talons’
3. Say – Indoor Voices
4. Aeroplane – House Plants
5. When I Was an Island – David Karsten Daniels
6. The Gentleman’s Apocalypse – JR Green
7. Hitman – Mrs. Hopewell
8. sun drops – ratbath
9. A Cruise – Brian S. Cassidy
10. Orpheus – Matt Kivel
11. Your Love – Jeremy Squires (INTERVIEW)
12. Blood Moon – C.M. Slenko
13. Bake – Broken Beak
14. Brushes Like a Fox – Saint Corsair
15. daniel – francie cool
16. Baby Blue – Mount Moriah
17. For You – Free Cake For Every Creature
18. Have This Dance – Govier
19. Goodness (trailer) – The Hotelier
20. The River Because – Sawtooth
21. why are you so cool? – Dying Adolescence
22. cockroach – tall friend
23. Waiting – Faint Peter
24. Heart Destroyer – Lazy Legs
25. Take it Forever – Beat Radio (INTERVIEW)
26. Every One of Them, Dogs – Quarterly
27. like a feather or a pawprint – Field Medic
28. Lay For June – Old Earth
29. 2 old 2 broke – Gorgeous Bully
30. Funny Man Routine – Table People
31. House & Home – Arlo Aldo
32. Cave Song – Sea Ghost
33. Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac cover) – Boosegumps (from Sugar Rush)

The post February 2016 Roundup – A Mixtape appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The other instrumental figure in the birth of Janus was Glasgow folk musician Alasdair Roberts, who accepted an unsolicited proposal from Kivel to produce the album, the start of a close professional and personal relationship. Kivel eventually travelled to Glasgow to record the album with Roberts at Green Door Studios. It is perhaps Roberts’s voice then that you can hear briefly at the beginning of the opening title track, a soft and vulnerable acoustic ballad that introduces not only Kivel’s gentle vocals but also the other instrumental embellishments with a gathering crescendo around the three quarter mark.

‘Violets’ has a touch of country twang and a squealed guitar solo finale, and was purportedly influenced by a documentary Kivel watched about the West Memphis Three, a trio of teenagers alleged (and since released owing to new evidence) to have carried out satanic murders in 1993. In a feature with Interview Magazine, Kivel talks about how he thought a lot about how those types of True Crime stories have a dark, seemingly magnetic pull on us, and what that says about our characters. Next up ‘Pyrrha’ is all acoustic guitar and shuffling percussion and sleepy-sounding horns, all pinned together with Kivel’s lovely croon, while piano steps to the fore on ‘Prime Meridian’, a track which sounds somehow candle-lit and has several weird jazzy outbursts, when it sounds like the tumbling shadows grow claws and begin to move around on their own. ‘No Return’ returns to quivering, melancholy folk.

“‘There is no God he said’
and I didn’t mind.
Then you looked at the sky
and found nothing for me”

‘Janice’ follows suit, before ‘Jamie’s’ takes a darker turn, a bleak song in which the title character comes out to her parents and boyfriend and ends up covered in various bodily fluids, the sound of distorted horns arriving like a visit from Lynch or Stetson.

‘The Shining Path’ is immediately extraordinary for its opening electric stomp, which is quite unlike the sound on the rest of the album. Kivel delivers his vocals in the hushed valleys between the peaks of noise and feedback, ensuring the soft intimacy is not lost in the storm. ‘Orpheus’ has a Bry Webb kind of vibe, along with some simple percussion and piano and background vocals which give things an upbeat air despite lyrics which deal with a betrayal. Closer ‘Palm Beach’ is as soft and sweet as things get, the falsetto vocals high and light and barely there at all.

Janus is to be released on the 5th of February on Driftless Recordings. You can pre-order the LP now.

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