I didn't know what I felt about this record by David Christian Pajo. Then I hated
it. There was something unspecific about its beauty, something smudged. Vague
references to "another overdose" pointed to drugged-out feelings, along with
your usual bad-relationship blues. Pajo seemed to have been with a bad girl.
And felt bad things. But his windy radio voice, transmitted from some faraway
place, the supreme guitar-playing delicacy that has made him such a cult figure
(in Slint, Tortoise, Papa M and Zwan), kept it all masked. The cover art, lush
black-and-white photography of moon shimmers on rippled sand as an ocean retreats,
fit the vibe perfectly. Deserted. Infinite. Introspective. I could hear the feel
of The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" as the music moved through Simon & Garfunkel
to splash down a few decades later in lower moods of the current American folk
underground:
the fantasia of failure and psychedelic melancholy that is flavor of the year.
A touch of submerged T-Rex funk on "War Is Dead" only added to the ethereal drift.
This music was lost in time, Pajo's guitar moving out of key, then back in, that
voice of his whispering regret, blame, need, coldness, all in a dream. Somewhere
I started to like it. |
