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You're The Father Of My Songs -
Amanda Jo drops her
fourth LP. Alternative Americana's most courageous chanteuse is
authentic in ways that make her innate weirdness a blessing on the
musical landscape.
By RAR
Amanda
Jo Williams appeals to me for the sheer anarchy of her approach to
songwriting and performance, and possibly life in general, so take this
pro-biased review of her new LP You're the Father of My Songs for
what it's worth. She appeals to me in the way that she and her entire
ensemble cast of musicians just seem to fall from the sky on these LPs,
with this esoteric and cryptic material, and smash down intact and whole
to present this extraordinarily quirky vision. Amanda Jo defies the
strictures of music-done-regular and her band provides uncommon
expansion of her artistic vision. That's my take, taken in recognition
of the fact that some people will hear the first few measures of an
Amanda Jo track and do one of those "WTF" things. I feel bad for those
people.
"2000 Hell" opens up
with an invocation of modern hell, the "right" but the "hard" road,
where "you don't get to have sex in your underwear." Amanda introduces
the tune with her child's guitar and kick bass and her very odd vocal
style, which to the uninitiated will sound as if she is kidding; having
us all on. That's the thing about Amanda Jo: she may well be having us
all on for whatever it gains her, but that can't be measured in units of
any kind. Hers is not the path to pop stardom but rather the path to
that old freezer we keep in the woods out back, marked "Do Not Opine".
One day we may learn that Amanda crawled out of that old cold trap, like
that kid in The Ring did from that old well, intent upon
destroying our world's mundane boundaries, musical and otherwise.
That said, "2000 Hell"
comes on strong as her excellent band kicks in and takes it to that
carnival zone where Amanda Jo Williams does her side act. This band is
so righteous that it takes Amanda to a musical place heartbreakingly
close to accessibility, which has the extraordinary effect of forced
realization: Amanda in familiar mode, where the harmonies are
pretty and the violin softens the wild guitar parts into a
high-production sheen, and makes you realize how wonderfully anarchic
and special the woman who just crawled out of the freezer really is. One
almost breathes a sigh of relief when she goes back to being so
freakingly individual and bizarre. I never get very many measures into
an Amanda Jo Williams album without wanting to stay because it just
feels like there is truth hiding here somewhere, possibly aging out back
in that rusting refrigerator.
Track two, "Animal Dog",
is absolutely beautiful melodically. When Amanda Jo sings in her high
registers she is a perfect angel; it is only when she drops into her
narrative mode, almost more spoken than sung, that she has that
noticeably odd tonality. That Amanda, to me, has always sounded like an
old hill woman who may not have all of her teeth. The angelic-voiced
Amanda somehow arises from that like a beautiful inner thing; a sort of
plasma of emerging spirit that has the effect of mirroring Amanda Jo's
less ethereal side, like a window opening to who she really is. I get
the sense of hidden things revealed, and clever guises, designed to mask
raw feelings, lifted free to expose vulnerable truths. But that is only
in the narrative of each song, because on stage Amanda Jo is a perfect
slate of no-information. This clash of narrative and narrative style is
the essence of the "Amanda Jo Williams experience".
Track three, "Box the
Rain", is Amanda Jo in shifting time signatures, which I think may be
new for her. She was living in 4/4 time on her previous LP, but this
tune is all over the place. I'm not sure that it really works, though I
suspect that if you were in a bar and really drunk that this song would
take you right to the moon, or possibly the toilet. As nutty as is the
sonic blast that is the Amanda Jo Williams show, she and her band can
reproduce this stuff live with perfect authenticity, and I wouldn't be
surprised to learn they had recorded it more or less that way.
Track four, "Holster,
The Gun it Hangs in There", is one Amanda's catchy taunts about
relationships and the acting out that characterizes so much of our
personal interplay. It has a catchy, upbeat likeability that one could
almost imagine slipping into the playlist of an Internet radio station
your aunt in Tennessee might listen to.
Track five, "George",
feels like a mystery story about being haunted by a detached soul; maybe
a child given up for adoption at birth. I have no idea what this strange
tune is really about but it is lovely and haunting, in that way of being
haunted by roving carnival musicians, the Amanda trademark. (Just for a
minute imagine those cats in the hats who follow tourists around in
vacation resorts in the Caribbean, playing annoying songs until you tip
them to go away, except now imagine that they are gypsies from Dark's
Carnival in Something Wicked This Way Comes, and that they
arrange odd agreements with unwary souls. This is the way I see Amanda's
band.)
Amanda's secret is that
you get the feeling that she has a secret. It may be sorrow,
heartbreak and loneliness splattered against a scrim of feigned
detachment; or, it may be about all of those things that promise the
freedom of understanding. I pick this up in Amanda Jo's writing; that
maybe she codes things for us because people are too screwed up in their
perceptions of things to work with black and white statements. Or then
again, maybe I am utterly missing the point of Amanda Jo altogether. To
my way of thinking, what does it matter? She is an artist who inspires
one to wonder what she is telling us in her songs, and this is almost
trick enough. She presents mysterious narratives in which language seems
carefully chosen for its collision capabilities, so that every turn of
phrase splinters off possible interpretations, not only of the storyline
but of the context within which it is set: Amanda's world, which is a
strange and enchanted realm, like a Grimm's tale.
Track six, "Suppose I
Did Mean Love", is a reverb-soaked Anti-Amanda, almost normal in its
yearning for a lost love. "I tried to hold you, I failed..." Amanda does
precious few songs that one could imagine being covered by another
performer, but I could hear a girl band doing this in a pop fashion;
sort of latter-day Shangri-Las style, like "Walking In the Sand", with
the haunt turned up high.
Track seven, "On to
Gold", seems to be menu choices made from the local confectionary shop.
It would be a nice road song, sort of non-descript nuttiness with
ranging production - lots of backing vocals, violin, that devil electric
guitar.
Track eight, "Slowly",
is bump-bump-bump-bump Amanda and seems to be about taking things in
life in their time. It is sweet, like good advice from grandma.
Track nine, "Wild
Moonless Day" - "I'm not an angel anymore, I went downtown..." This song
seems to be about transitions and it is pretty commercial-sounding by
Amanda Jo standards. "She speaks like a child..." Some music critics
have described Amanda Joe Williams using words similar to these.
Track ten, "Goddamn
Muse" - "If I had you I'd throw you away...what would you do with a
crazy brain?" Amanda Jo needs a muse in this one, and she'll take it
where she can find it, even in a text message.
Track eleven, "Wrong-ong-ong",
closes out the album with a recognition of having made a mistake about a
relationship. This song sometimes conjures up old rock'n roll and then
veers back into that Amanda mode where she uses a chorus singer like a
comic's echo to emphasize key words, mostly having to do with missteps
in perception of a potential partner.
Overall, LP #4 for
Amanda Jo Williams shows her stretching out compositionally to explore
time signatures and she is more adventurous on this release with her
ensemble cast of backing musicians, who seem to totally get her
and to channel her essence into their contributions to make a consistent
and remarkably whole sound.
It feels impossible to
me to rate Amanda Jo Williams' recordings on any existing scale
used to qualify such things. Her work is more like an art exhibit that
you take in for what you perceive its qualities to be; perceptions which
you can then kick around intellectually a bit before considering a
verdict. I find that in the course of that consideration I begin to feel
that a verdict would be damaging to the process, because with Amanda Jo
Williams deliberation is the best part. I find myself liking her world,
which on this LP is a little less weird than on her previous, by which I
mean that her emotions expressed on You're The Father Of My Songs
are more noticeably just like anyone else's. The out-of-kilter quality
about Amanda Jo's songs is really all in their presentation, and in her
playfulness with language, which challenges the listener to get their
real meanings. The mark of her success at this approach is that one is
inclined to stick around and listen.
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Amanda Jo Williams has a thing for stark and disquieting
images.
Review of Amanda
Jo Williams third album
Amanda Jo Williams - Facebook
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Learning
from Jimmy Iovine
