Popdose: the complete idiot’s guide to chris whitley
eric
· 1 year ago
Listening to Big Sky Country, something in the timbre of Whitley's voice made me think of Darden Smith for a minute. (Not that I've heard anything Smith has done for a dozen years or so.) I thought early on, when Smith was with Columbia, he was a promising artist. Whitley is not nearly so user-friendly. Not my cup of tea, but you increased my musical IQ. Thanks.
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
Nicely written, Jeff.
I’ve got a slightly different take on the first two albums and the way they work together—in retrospect, there’s a real arc there. Living with the Law was about a lot of things, but it was in part about the tension between country and city. The songs implied a character—a backwoods kid with poor impulse control, aching to burn down the trailer park and slip across the border, into the big city. Din is decidedly an urban album, steeped in grime and heroin. In a way, it shows what happens to that kid once he washes up in the city; cut loose from the traditional strictures that both nurtured and suffocated him on Law, he winds up seduced by the twin demons of smack and electric guitar—freed, but also corrupted.
One more point; listening to the solo demos of the Living with the Law material (i.e., the bonus tracks on the Poison Girl CD single), I was struck by the fact that, for all his fiddly production, Malcolm Burn really didn’t add much to the songs. All the elements are there in the dense, intricate acoustic guitar parts; Burn is really just recording the songs and fleshing them out a little. Din of Ecstasy also has a quasi-live feel, albeit with the full band—set ‘em up, roll tape, and let ‘em play. Terra Incognita, though, was the first time I heard Whitley using the studio as a compositional tool—using it to develop the songs, rather than simply to decorate them. And that, I think, defines the real dichotomy of his recorded output, between performance records (Law, Din, Dirt Floor, Hotel et al) and assembly records (Terra, Rocket House, Soft Dangerous Shores).
Also: no love for Perfect Day? It’s a flawed record, yeah, but its flaws, its weirdness. are important pieces of the puzzle, I think.
jefito
· 1 year ago
Shit, jackfear, you should have written this. I bow before you.
As for "Perfect Day"...it's a covers record. Not your typical covers record, sure, but that was why I didn't cover it when I originally wrote this, and yesterday when I was fleshing it out, I thought it was more important to add "Reiter In" and "Dislocation Blues."
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
Shit, jackfear, you should have written this
Hey, if any up-and-coming pop culture website were to, y'know, ask me...
jefito
· 1 year ago
Any artists you want to write up?
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
I was mostly joshing, but... I'll e-mail you later today.
David_E
· 1 year ago
Tremendous guide. My favorites are these, where I've only passing knowledge of an artist, and end up kicking myself for not digging deeper.
For this relative newbie's money, "Her Furious Angels" and "Narcotic Prayer" aren't quite as inaccessible as you present them. Maybe just 'cause I like my blues leavened with a little dirt n' machine.
One final note – the hard drive crash of '0whatever futzed "Fireroad (For Two)," marrying it (and it was an ugly, shotgun wedding) to the Pet Shop Boys' "What Have I Done To Deserve This." Wow.
jefito
· 1 year ago
Eep. I'm going to fix that right this minute. Thanks for letting me know.
jack
· 1 year ago
I loved "Living With the Law" when it first came out, then like most fans, had no idea what to make of "Din of Ecstasy" and finally lost touch after "Terra Incognita."
But we happened to see he was playing in a tiny little place in 2000 (or 2001... I forget exactly), just him, his guitar, and his feet beating time, and he just owned all of us from the first note. He was something to experience.
reval5
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this.
Whitley was one of those few artists that I knew from the beginning that I would buy whatever he put out, always picking it up on release day. I first saw him open for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1991 and was appropriately blown away. I was a newbie to the concert scene, but I knew I had been given a gift. Those were the high-gloss commercial days, but after the band gradually left the stage during the coda of "Bordertown" I knew I had to devour everything I could get my hands on.
I have the strongest connection to that first album, but Dirt Floor and Reiter In deserve to be hoisted to the top of his catalog. I honestly didn't get a whole lot from most of his albums, but the richness of LWTL dictated that I owed a debt to Chris throughout the rest of his career, which I happily paid.
I saw him live several times, sharing a double bill with Toad the Wet Sprocket, or between albums keeping his name out there and finally during the Rocket House tour, a day or two after an infamous meltdown in Portland. To say that he struggled with "demons" would be a quaint way to put it and the show that night was listless and uninspired. I left early, but there was always something about Chris Whitley that kept me coming back. He was a confounding artist, but he's one of the few that I discovered on my own and kept close to my heart for reasons I'm still not sure about.
I shook his hand after a show, just a few years after Din came out. His hands were enormous and strong and it was clear that they were his greatest asset - the way he made his living. It's not surprising really, considering the way he abused that National. They felt like what I imagine the hands of John Henry felt like - and for my money Chris Whitley deserves to be an American legend on that level.
Jack Feerick
· 1 year ago
The hands - God, yeah. There's a photo in the Living with the Law booklet where he's hunched over the National, his face half in shadow, those huge meathooks of his just dominating the composition. Hands like a strangler.
But it wasn't just power, or speed. There was such precision. On the solo demo of "Kick The Stones," for instance, it sounds like there's at least two guys playing, maybe three.
(Nick Drake had that, to—muzzy little whisper of a voice and hands that could bend a quarter in half.)
And I just can't wrap my head around what he's doing with his tunings. I worked out a halfway-decent version of "Living with the Law" in a simple drop-D, and was feeling pretty proud of myself; then I found out the tuning he was actually using, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The magician shows just how he does it, and somehow it only deepens the mystery; that's one hell of a trick.
aerique
· 1 year ago
Nothing about "Pigs Will Fly"? It's a pretty easy-going record, but I like it.
All Comments
I’ve got a slightly different take on the first two albums and the way they work together—in retrospect, there’s a real arc there. Living with the Law was about a lot of things, but it was in part about the tension between country and city. The songs implied a character—a backwoods kid with poor impulse control, aching to burn down the trailer park and slip across the border, into the big city. Din is decidedly an urban album, steeped in grime and heroin. In a way, it shows what happens to that kid once he washes up in the city; cut loose from the traditional strictures that both nurtured and suffocated him on Law, he winds up seduced by the twin demons of smack and electric guitar—freed, but also corrupted.
One more point; listening to the solo demos of the Living with the Law material (i.e., the bonus tracks on the Poison Girl CD single), I was struck by the fact that, for all his fiddly production, Malcolm Burn really didn’t add much to the songs. All the elements are there in the dense, intricate acoustic guitar parts; Burn is really just recording the songs and fleshing them out a little. Din of Ecstasy also has a quasi-live feel, albeit with the full band—set ‘em up, roll tape, and let ‘em play. Terra Incognita, though, was the first time I heard Whitley using the studio as a compositional tool—using it to develop the songs, rather than simply to decorate them. And that, I think, defines the real dichotomy of his recorded output, between performance records (Law, Din, Dirt Floor, Hotel et al) and assembly records (Terra, Rocket House, Soft Dangerous Shores).
Also: no love for Perfect Day? It’s a flawed record, yeah, but its flaws, its weirdness. are important pieces of the puzzle, I think.
As for "Perfect Day"...it's a covers record. Not your typical covers record, sure, but that was why I didn't cover it when I originally wrote this, and yesterday when I was fleshing it out, I thought it was more important to add "Reiter In" and "Dislocation Blues."
Hey, if any up-and-coming pop culture website were to, y'know, ask me...
For this relative newbie's money, "Her Furious Angels" and "Narcotic Prayer" aren't quite as inaccessible as you present them. Maybe just 'cause I like my blues leavened with a little dirt n' machine.
One final note – the hard drive crash of '0whatever futzed "Fireroad (For Two)," marrying it (and it was an ugly, shotgun wedding) to the Pet Shop Boys' "What Have I Done To Deserve This." Wow.
But we happened to see he was playing in a tiny little place in 2000 (or 2001... I forget exactly), just him, his guitar, and his feet beating time, and he just owned all of us from the first note. He was something to experience.
Whitley was one of those few artists that I knew from the beginning that I would buy whatever he put out, always picking it up on release day. I first saw him open for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1991 and was appropriately blown away. I was a newbie to the concert scene, but I knew I had been given a gift. Those were the high-gloss commercial days, but after the band gradually left the stage during the coda of "Bordertown" I knew I had to devour everything I could get my hands on.
I have the strongest connection to that first album, but Dirt Floor and Reiter In deserve to be hoisted to the top of his catalog. I honestly didn't get a whole lot from most of his albums, but the richness of LWTL dictated that I owed a debt to Chris throughout the rest of his career, which I happily paid.
I saw him live several times, sharing a double bill with Toad the Wet Sprocket, or between albums keeping his name out there and finally during the Rocket House tour, a day or two after an infamous meltdown in Portland. To say that he struggled with "demons" would be a quaint way to put it and the show that night was listless and uninspired. I left early, but there was always something about Chris Whitley that kept me coming back. He was a confounding artist, but he's one of the few that I discovered on my own and kept close to my heart for reasons I'm still not sure about.
I shook his hand after a show, just a few years after Din came out. His hands were enormous and strong and it was clear that they were his greatest asset - the way he made his living. It's not surprising really, considering the way he abused that National. They felt like what I imagine the hands of John Henry felt like - and for my money Chris Whitley deserves to be an American legend on that level.
But it wasn't just power, or speed. There was such precision. On the solo demo of "Kick The Stones," for instance, it sounds like there's at least two guys playing, maybe three.
(Nick Drake had that, to—muzzy little whisper of a voice and hands that could bend a quarter in half.)
And I just can't wrap my head around what he's doing with his tunings. I worked out a halfway-decent version of "Living with the Law" in a simple drop-D, and was feeling pretty proud of myself; then I found out the tuning he was actually using, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The magician shows just how he does it, and somehow it only deepens the mystery; that's one hell of a trick.