It starts with a fanfare. A single trumpet, blowing high and wild, glimmers of sunlight jabbing holes in a stormy sky. Behind it, guitars, not so much strummed as hammered, wire and wood pushed to their limits. The chording is almost Spanish, calling up the drama of a spaghetti Western, a Morricone showdown. Two gunmen, hands crooked over their holsters, waiting for the first toll of high noon. A honky-tonk piano slides into the mix, maybe from the saloon where an argument over cards or a girl started, to finish the matter at hand in a crack of gunfire, of blood in the dust.
It builds, it builds, you can smell the tension, the tremble in the trigger fingers, sweat easing out from the band of the stetson. One last howl from the trumpet, a single pure high note holding for that second longer than it should and then and then and then
BANG. The drums, finally, a cannonade, regiments of worn boot heels marching in lockstep across a windblasted mountain range. More guitars, electric now, overdriven, snarling like predators running down their prey. And a voice, sneering, insouciant, a challenge, a dare.
‘So here we are in a special place
What are you gonna do here?
Now we stand in a special place
What will you do here?
What show of soul
are we gonna get from you?
It could be Deliverance
Or History
Under these skies so blue
Something true…’
Now that’s how you start an album.
Continue reading Too High, Too Far, Too Soon
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 