Laura Gibson - Beasts of Seasons

General Ratings:

Music: 7
Lyrics: 7
Scope: 4
Consistency: 7

RIYL: Jolie Holland, 7 Swans-era Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine

Further Listening: Essie Jain, Marianne Dissard, Jenny Scheinman

Place of Origin: Coquille, OR

Instrument/Sounds List: Piano, Acoustic Guitar, Multi-Tracked Vocals, Upright (sometimes bowed) Bass, Drums, Electric Guitar, Violin, Viola, Cello, Banjo, Dulcimer, Pedal Steel, Singing Saw, Trumpet, Trombone, Clarinet, Oboe, Organ, Keyboard/Synthsizer, Theremin, Timpani, Vibraphone, Alternative Percussion (Jingle Bells, Junk Bag & Tambourine), Tape/Pedal Manipulation, Ambient Sounds.

Mood Tones:

Season: Autumn
Weather: Rainy
Time of Day: Dusk

Song Highlights: Funeral Song, Sleeper, Shadows on Parade

Favorite Lyrics:

"I remember my mother's hands,/
Laced in prayer,/
Frail as birds,/
Faith she carried like/
A terrible, terrible ache."
(from "Glory")

"With no sorrow,/
Ask no greater pardon/
Than the pattern Time/
Is carving in your skin."
(from "Funeral Song")

"To let you go/
Is to lose my balance,/
Is to fall in silence/
Is to wait, wait, wait.

For I was born/
In a colder time,/
And we made our vows/
In ice and steel."
(from "Sleeper")

Other Thoughts:

To really get at what's great about this record (and the rest of Laura Gibson's catalogue), allow me to talk for a moment about ice cream. Ever since I was a small child, it's dumbfounded me that vanilla ice cream was as ubiquitous as it was. There just wasn't any "there" there, its flavor generally lacking complex descriptor, its primary asset seeming to be that in being non-descript, it was easy to pair with other, more delineated toppings or dessert items. My tastes in ice cream (as in music and most things in life), have always tended to the unique and singular; I'll take chocolate over vanilla, mint Oreo over chocolate, etc. etc. But sooner or later, as with most preconceptions, you run into the exception that proves what is possible when a component of your underlying assumptions is wrong and at the same time seems to vindicate your conclusions in the over-whelming majority of cases. For me and vanilla ice cream, this fateful tete a tete came when late in college I was over at a professor's house for an end of the year dinner, and for dessert he served pecan pie with home-made Mexican vanilla ice cream. Rather than simply tasting sweet, there was a strong, insistent flavor that was at once reminiscent of the extract that my mother used to make Toll House cookies and at the same time fairly unique (like the difference between Thai and Italian basil). Eating this vanilla ice cream made me want to eat vanilla ice cream, but equally importantly, it reaffirmed to me that what I'd always held to be true about most of the store-bought variants (that, with the possible exception of Haagen Daz, they were mostly dreck) was correct.

This is perhaps an overwrought metaphor meant in service of the idea that Beasts of Seasons is the homemade Mexican vanilla masterpiece to the mediocre pre-packaged sweet cream of the Starbucks class of acoustic female balladeers. On the one hand, it would be misleading to suggest that you're going to get anything other than quiet, well-orchestrated, rainy day folk tunes from any of the records Ms. Gibson has released (although to be fair, I've never been able to track down Amends, her self-released freshman effort). On the other hand, I almost shudder to locate LG within the same sentence as the rest of that crowd, not only because she makes music of a higher caliber, but ultimately I think because it would be easy for someone who wasn't paying enough attention to not hear the difference(s) between them. Even to make my opening analogy may do this record a disservice, as for the very gambit stated, vanilla has come to be a negative descriptor indicating pleasant mediocrity, something this record never even nears.

So we're dealing with subtleties here. I'll go one step further and say that we're dealing with Minimalism, a strange claim to make of a record whose instrument list is as robust as this. The way I would describe this phenomenom is that it's as if she's surrounded by a full orchestra where every musician has the sheet music to the entire record, but during each song she selects two or three instruments that she feels best evoke the tone she's looking to elicit, points to those players and they're the only ones allowed to play along. The larger effect that this has is that you don't really notice the accompaniment the first couple times you listen to the record; the primary melodies are carried by Ms. Gibson, either with a piano or acoustic guitar, and it's not difficult to imagine each one faithfully rendered in a coffeehouse-like setting, one amp and one microphone. The lyrics probably also lie within the penumbra of minimalism, matching the emotional directness of Cat Power and the mantra-like progressions of M. Ward (a fellow Portland resident) with a grace born of a stricter sense of meter and a romantic's preoccupation with nature and the body.

Sealing the deal is Ms. Gibson's voice which I would describe as a husky mezzo-soprano (strange as that may sound) and perhaps the most singular aspect of the album. It would be wrong to say that it isn't pretty, it is, but it's also stronger and oddly cadenced. You'll more easily notice the meter of the songs' lyrics because of the way she inverts the inflections of many of her words (putting em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble), often over-enunciating them as well. This grants an extra layer of rhythm to songs that otherwise might feel a bit wispy, but it also occasionally makes the content of the lyrics harder to focus on. When I sat down with the lyrics, I was first surprised to realize that a majority of the songs were not about what I had thought they were about, then interested to re-hear each knowing its content and context, and finally pleased to note that despite their simplicity, that they translated well beyond the confines of each song.

I'd also be remiss not to talk for a second about the Portland scene, that counts Ms. Gibson a member and its main locus at Hush Records (which has released her last two records). After Grunge died out, it's almost as if America grew out of the habit of having scenes (e.g. Minneapolis in the mid-80s, NY or LA in the late 70s, Detroit in the 60s and early 70s, etc.), and the closest thing we've had since is the growing collective of bands that move to Brooklyn and sit in on each others' records. This isn't really the same thing though, as its preoccupations are more pragmatic than aesthetic, it's made up mostly of transplants and finds its function more as a minor league launching pad than as an end unto itself. In contrast to all this, the scene that's been building in Portland over the last 5 or 6 years does seem organic and unified; most of the bands are homegrown and make music that takes the folk and folk-rock records of the late 60s as its primary influence (for instance, I'd be really surprised if LG doesn't have every note of the first 4 Leonard Cohen records memorized), as seen through the prism of the similarly prepossessed, similarly local Elliott Smith (whom Hush compiled a tribute record for). You're probably familiar with the bigger names, like The Decemberists and M. Ward, but the scene is pretty deep, and if you like this sort of music, you might do yourself a favor and spend some time with the Hush catalogue (I'd recommend starting with either Parks and Recreation or Norfolk and Western (whose Adam Selzer appears on Beasts of Seasons, and owns and runs the recording studio that half the scene uses).

The Downside:

A record this short (9 songs, under 40 minutes) should have eliminated all filler, but there are still a couple of songs without strong melody or redemptive lyric that service only the running length itself, which I could do without. There's also not a whole lot of variation here, be it of tone or of musical key. Given that this record could easily and aptly be described as sad-bastard music, dark and depressive (if not always depressing), you may reach the end of it feeling a bit wrung out, a bit beaten back by life. It can also at times be mesmerizing and soporific. I wouldn't have originally said that it was exacting, but looking over these descriptions, I think when it is given the proper amount of attention, that adjective is apt.