"A short album that is dark, depressing, haunting, atmospheric, ominous, and raw as a bare nerve. Everything moves at a slow (and somehow desperate) pace, with.... orchestrations giving the whole sequence a kind of ponderous claustrophobia, and the overall tone here is one of enforced defeat and regret".
The description is of "Snowed In", the 2003 album by Tim Rose, an album one writer described as sounding "like it comes from the heart of a caged lion". Something, though, of the tone conveyed by this description invites comparisons with "I'm New Here", the first in sixteen years from Gil Scott-Heron.
I am not sure why it has taken me so long to listen to this album. I think I was avoiding it. Musicians held, rightly, in impossibly high esteem; those who move - really move one - emotionally time and again lyrically. Inevitably, these are the guys who have the biggest of personal problems in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. That is, if they manage to get there at all. Theirs are the richer voices. The poets. Those who, even in slur and haze, prove capable of impeccable nuance and timing. The few who don't so much hit a nerve as wrench at that place between the stomach and the mind which is never ever possible precisely to locate.
So, as it was, and to the melt of December's snow, I suddenly skidded into it. A stumble across McGrooger's "Womad Sunday" list revealed "New York is Killing Me". I blame him and I am grateful:
"Characters, tourists, travellers and Arabs cook Halal food
It's foul moods on the average
Hood battlers, half-cyphers, tight spitting, spazzing
Noticing black asses on white women
Village Voices I heard around Strivers' Row
Next to where Calloway once sang, 'Heide Ho'
Welcome to the side-show where many eyes are low
Posted up Daily News travel round by the low
Let me tell ya fast city ain't living all
it's cracked up to be
Yes seem I need to go home
and slow down in Jackson, Tennessee".
So much for one track in the middle. I guess it is instinct that informs the need to listen from humble beginnings through to any bitter end. There was, of course, no option here. I braced myself for any feelings of letdown; just accepted that I was oddly compelled to force myself right into it. Do it. Let's get it out of the way quickly. The drugs, imprisonment, ageing. Surely we should all know by now from music's heritage what all of these things tend to do to a certain kind of man? Well, yes, but this is Gil. This really is Gil and not the shambles that graced a Glastonbury stage in two thousand and who knows? I don't. I was there but I doubt that he was at the time. It was bleak but not in any sense that engaged. I deliberately created a blackspot. This though is Gil as he and we would recognise him, not on a personal level what we would necessarily want for him, but musically and lyrically it is representative. He's broken but not, apparently, bound.
"I'm New Here" has it's flaws. It would do, just as the more obvious comparison of the Rubin and Cash collaborations shows that perfection doesn't automatically make for a masterpiece. Those too had sensitivity and soul. Here it is another double R - Richard Russell - who produces and the project is executed knowingly. This, at least, is slightly hopeful in terms of welfare. One would expect to hear a hip-hop slant to what is essentially a brief work of blues and poetry. Russell's background and Gil's influence both see to it that it is always around but fortunately it never overwhelms. The essential content, grim and philosophical, has more than enough substance to have that impact in itself.
In this age of Twitter, some may have a notion ironically that there is too much speech here; that this may be an indication of thinness there; that this isn't the Gil of old. But with suitably sparse arrangements and a raw and brooding confinement of sound, though not ideas, could it really have been any different? I don't think so; not in these times; not as things are now. So what we get is a scattering of originals and cover versions, along with soundbites that are so involved in their musings, the experience is utterly draining. Whether it is the version of Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues" or the self-penned, largely spoken, "The Crutch", you want to leave it but just have to stick around and weather it. Slush it most definitely is not:
"It's easier to run,
Easier than staying and finding out you're the only one...who didn't run
Because running will be the way your life and mine will be described
As in "the long run"
Or as in having given someone a "run for his money"
Or as in "running out of time"".
That, from the latter, is described as having been written by Russell and Scott-Heron. It is not the only track on which credits are shared. One hopes that Richard to Gil isn't as Eugene was to Brian. I very much doubt that the relationship is all that similar. Roughshod it may be - there is not a glimpse of the smoothness of, say, "A Sign of the Ages" - but the overall drift is of connection with the past. There is an individual togetherness. Remember that the earlyish compilation "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was similarly unevenly tracked in rhythm, maybe staccato for holding steady on life's ice. There is also tremendous warmth. Just as on "Pieces of a Man", the references to elder women in the family are so honest and heartfelt that many would find them too unnervingly painful. But, as always, they are pitched with such an absence of artificiality that they convey a masculinity which few lyricists can reach emotionally, let alone express. So then:
"I saw my grandma sweeping
With her old straw broom
But she didn't know what she was doing
She could hardly understand
That she was really sweeping up..
Pieces of a man".
And now, in "On Coming from a Broken Home Parts 1 and 2", which are the bookends of "I'm New Here" -
"Sent to live with my grandma down south
When my uncle was leaving
and my grandfather had just left for heaven
They said and as every-ologist would certainly note
I had no strong male figure right?
But Lily Scott was absolutely not your mail order room service type cast black grandmother
I was moved in with her; temporarily, just until things were patched,
Til this was patched and til that was patched
Until i became at 3, 4, 5,6 ,7, 8, 9 and 10
The patch that held Lily Scott who held me and like them for
I become one more and I loved her from the absolute marrow of my bones".
I don't know what Gil was like at Charlton Park during the hot days of this summer, how he seemed, how he performed. McGrooger might remind me again. I missed Womad in 2010. It has been a difficult year for me in many ways. Perhaps subconsciously I chose not to go for some reason. "I'm New Here" will divide the critics - it has already done so - and that is often the sign of a very good album, particularly among those placed in the "difficult" rack. While it may be as darkly driven as the umpteenth night at home during wintry conditions, it isn't like the Rose vehicle, wholly full of regret and defeat. There is grit in it's wheels and the old lion still roams and roars a bit whatever he feels at base root. I'm glad I listened to it all. I'm pleased that I had absolutely no choice. It wasn't easy but it was worth it. The Album of the Year for me unless something surprising emerges in these final days.
Take some time out to take it in soon. Do it wherever. Face up to it before everyone seems old.
The description is of "Snowed In", the 2003 album by Tim Rose, an album one writer described as sounding "like it comes from the heart of a caged lion". Something, though, of the tone conveyed by this description invites comparisons with "I'm New Here", the first in sixteen years from Gil Scott-Heron.
I am not sure why it has taken me so long to listen to this album. I think I was avoiding it. Musicians held, rightly, in impossibly high esteem; those who move - really move one - emotionally time and again lyrically. Inevitably, these are the guys who have the biggest of personal problems in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. That is, if they manage to get there at all. Theirs are the richer voices. The poets. Those who, even in slur and haze, prove capable of impeccable nuance and timing. The few who don't so much hit a nerve as wrench at that place between the stomach and the mind which is never ever possible precisely to locate.
So, as it was, and to the melt of December's snow, I suddenly skidded into it. A stumble across McGrooger's "Womad Sunday" list revealed "New York is Killing Me". I blame him and I am grateful:
"Characters, tourists, travellers and Arabs cook Halal food
It's foul moods on the average
Hood battlers, half-cyphers, tight spitting, spazzing
Noticing black asses on white women
Village Voices I heard around Strivers' Row
Next to where Calloway once sang, 'Heide Ho'
Welcome to the side-show where many eyes are low
Posted up Daily News travel round by the low
Let me tell ya fast city ain't living all
it's cracked up to be
Yes seem I need to go home
and slow down in Jackson, Tennessee".
So much for one track in the middle. I guess it is instinct that informs the need to listen from humble beginnings through to any bitter end. There was, of course, no option here. I braced myself for any feelings of letdown; just accepted that I was oddly compelled to force myself right into it. Do it. Let's get it out of the way quickly. The drugs, imprisonment, ageing. Surely we should all know by now from music's heritage what all of these things tend to do to a certain kind of man? Well, yes, but this is Gil. This really is Gil and not the shambles that graced a Glastonbury stage in two thousand and who knows? I don't. I was there but I doubt that he was at the time. It was bleak but not in any sense that engaged. I deliberately created a blackspot. This though is Gil as he and we would recognise him, not on a personal level what we would necessarily want for him, but musically and lyrically it is representative. He's broken but not, apparently, bound.
"I'm New Here" has it's flaws. It would do, just as the more obvious comparison of the Rubin and Cash collaborations shows that perfection doesn't automatically make for a masterpiece. Those too had sensitivity and soul. Here it is another double R - Richard Russell - who produces and the project is executed knowingly. This, at least, is slightly hopeful in terms of welfare. One would expect to hear a hip-hop slant to what is essentially a brief work of blues and poetry. Russell's background and Gil's influence both see to it that it is always around but fortunately it never overwhelms. The essential content, grim and philosophical, has more than enough substance to have that impact in itself.
In this age of Twitter, some may have a notion ironically that there is too much speech here; that this may be an indication of thinness there; that this isn't the Gil of old. But with suitably sparse arrangements and a raw and brooding confinement of sound, though not ideas, could it really have been any different? I don't think so; not in these times; not as things are now. So what we get is a scattering of originals and cover versions, along with soundbites that are so involved in their musings, the experience is utterly draining. Whether it is the version of Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues" or the self-penned, largely spoken, "The Crutch", you want to leave it but just have to stick around and weather it. Slush it most definitely is not:
"It's easier to run,
Easier than staying and finding out you're the only one...who didn't run
Because running will be the way your life and mine will be described
As in "the long run"
Or as in having given someone a "run for his money"
Or as in "running out of time"".
That, from the latter, is described as having been written by Russell and Scott-Heron. It is not the only track on which credits are shared. One hopes that Richard to Gil isn't as Eugene was to Brian. I very much doubt that the relationship is all that similar. Roughshod it may be - there is not a glimpse of the smoothness of, say, "A Sign of the Ages" - but the overall drift is of connection with the past. There is an individual togetherness. Remember that the earlyish compilation "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was similarly unevenly tracked in rhythm, maybe staccato for holding steady on life's ice. There is also tremendous warmth. Just as on "Pieces of a Man", the references to elder women in the family are so honest and heartfelt that many would find them too unnervingly painful. But, as always, they are pitched with such an absence of artificiality that they convey a masculinity which few lyricists can reach emotionally, let alone express. So then:
"I saw my grandma sweeping
With her old straw broom
But she didn't know what she was doing
She could hardly understand
That she was really sweeping up..
Pieces of a man".
And now, in "On Coming from a Broken Home Parts 1 and 2", which are the bookends of "I'm New Here" -
"Sent to live with my grandma down south
When my uncle was leaving
and my grandfather had just left for heaven
They said and as every-ologist would certainly note
I had no strong male figure right?
But Lily Scott was absolutely not your mail order room service type cast black grandmother
I was moved in with her; temporarily, just until things were patched,
Til this was patched and til that was patched
Until i became at 3, 4, 5,6 ,7, 8, 9 and 10
The patch that held Lily Scott who held me and like them for
I become one more and I loved her from the absolute marrow of my bones".
I don't know what Gil was like at Charlton Park during the hot days of this summer, how he seemed, how he performed. McGrooger might remind me again. I missed Womad in 2010. It has been a difficult year for me in many ways. Perhaps subconsciously I chose not to go for some reason. "I'm New Here" will divide the critics - it has already done so - and that is often the sign of a very good album, particularly among those placed in the "difficult" rack. While it may be as darkly driven as the umpteenth night at home during wintry conditions, it isn't like the Rose vehicle, wholly full of regret and defeat. There is grit in it's wheels and the old lion still roams and roars a bit whatever he feels at base root. I'm glad I listened to it all. I'm pleased that I had absolutely no choice. It wasn't easy but it was worth it. The Album of the Year for me unless something surprising emerges in these final days.
Take some time out to take it in soon. Do it wherever. Face up to it before everyone seems old.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~44~RS~)
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