A Distorted Reality.

With the demise of Starve in Heaven, I felt that this deserved a repost.

James Summerfield’s MySpace

Birmingham seems to be at the forefront of a new wave of folk- and country-inspired music, with the likes of Sam Bentley, Friends of the Stars etc. coming to the favour of ourselves and other local media. And here, in James Summerfield, we could have another sign that the next ‘Birmingham sound’ is going to be closer to Saddle Creek’s current definition of the ‘Omaha sound’ than the metal of the ’80s.

The album starts with an almost painfully cliché country-esque song title in Another Day With You’s Like Torture - it just screams of the likes of I Beat My Wife to Dull the Pain mid-Western America songwriting - but (luckily) it finds its salvation in the content of the song itself. It’s a delicate number of strings, acoustic guitar, slide guitar and drums accompanied by the sort of pained, spiderweb-thin vocal delivery paralleling that of the late Elliott Smith. The lyrics are full of sweet little references to the limitations of knowledge and the transience of relationships, throwing back memories to late-era ‘everything is a ballad’ Dr. Hook. And that is quite possibly the only time that that particular comparison has been made favourably.

Heads Down and Eyes Up is a song which I can immediately love, if only for the passing theme of ‘I can’t stand theists for whom God only exists in their hours of need.’ It’s just delightful commentary on a breed worthy of hate. Again, Elliott Smith comparisons seem necessary: the delay on the voice is reminiscent of Independence Day, and works to thicken out the texture of the song in the same way, alongside the far more minimal backing of slide guitar and strings.

The third song on the album, Stuck in the Mud, is probably the most indicative of the minimalism of his music: voice and guitar. It’s a simple combination which works, especially with the contrast between the harsher highs of his vocal chords and the clean sounding mids of his accompanying guitar. Count to Ten is, simply, wonderful: soothing vocals tell the story of a stalkerish distant desire, but in terms so pure. Chinese food, independent films, cashews and cheap wine are truly the more base components of a successful relationship. The sudden-onset swell of the instruments at the end of the song at the point of ‘I’m thinking of you even though we have not met’ seems so earnest that the song cannot be construed as anything but earnest by anything possessing a heart. The descent into a whisper from this just compounds the effect. The subsequent instrumental of Jelly Bones demonstrates the technical proficiency of James quite well.

Getting thoroughly hammered because of a loved one: it’s so passé, but so wonderfully adaptable to music. What’s on Your Mind shows a struggle between whiskey and wine brought on by the perceived distance of another, and its wonderfully executed with vocals which for the first time on the album seem strained, and it’s a strain of a most appealing nature. It’s an emotional strain. It’s genuine. Delusions of adequacy and grandeur are also great concepts for songs, and Films tackles this, again, with great aplomb. The vocals and guitar mesh to form a whole, rather than just being the sum of two parts.

A Little Time’s guitar part is wonderfully playful, and it’s an infectious riff. It could be considered danceable, as far as that term is usable in country. I’d be a Helpless Friend is a song, once again, of James Summerfield’s more minimalist side: guitar plucking accompanied by slide and the most gentle of percussion. At 1:59, it’s a nice break from the rest of the album.

Once is a sad song, simple as: the debate of love as a once in a lifetime experience versus a constant one just doesn’t lend itself to jolly music. His melancholy is an enjoyable one, though: the vibrato on the vocals becomes gradually more and more unrestrained as the song goes on, just giving the feeling that the performer is close to tears. It’s wonderful.

9 Lives and Paper Bags are a stylistic departure from what was the formula laid down up to now. 9 Lives sees the introduction of clean electric guitars and a far more staccato vocal style. Paper Bags, on the other hand, is the polar opposite to this. The song brings with it a delightfully fragile piano intro and a gentle climb to full instrumentation. The only lyrics in this song, which are sung towards the end, serve as a closing to this album wonderfully: it’s a synoptic account of the themes of the entire album.

I must say that this album is, in a little way, a little hackneyed, but only in a thematic sense; and I’m not quite sure as to how bad of a thing that is. Sure, the songs are about love, about life, about the day-to-day: and all of that has been done before ad inifitum. But who cares? These themes cut to the very core of the human condition.

It’s out in August. Buy it.

Commercially Inviable Records, the record label at the helm of what I see as the folk revolution in Birmingham, are really pressing the concept of ‘art for art’s sake’, and I can truly respect that. I hope that their lineup grows exponentially with a maintenance of quality.