Seagull is on the Rise (Part II)

For whatever reason, my initial excitement about the generously expanded reissues of the first two Frog Eyes' albums, The Bloody Hand and The Golden River, was followed by months of completely forgetting about their existence. Luckily, a recent binge of internet mailorder activity resulted in the purchase of the two reissued albums, both of which I've been listening to ever since.

I've had most of the songs from The Golden River reissue for quite some time (and I posted a few songs back in March), so I'm already well versed with their greatness. But I'm happy to report that the unreleased Blue Pine album Seagull s on the Rise, which is included in The Bloody Hand reissue, exceeded all expectations.

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Blue Pine - One Considers Sailing On

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This is not the kind of music that MP3 blogs capture well. Rather than the shiny, tightly packed, bouncing songs that can withstand being listened to semi-passively at work or while browsing the internet for news of impending global collapse, this is music to be engaged with more directly, preferably with the lights out. Using the medium of drunken, brooding and occasionally frantic vocals backed by heroin-binge musical arrangements, "One Considers Sailing On" is the musical equivalent of fever sweats: it has an unstable quality to it, like both the singer and the song could collapse at any minute, like it's being held together by a kind of desperate, nervous energy. You can almost picture Carey Mercer writhing on stage, with beads of perspiration and blood forming on his forehead, spitting the lyrics into the microphone as the band plays hypnotically behind him. And, with song titles like "Drinking: The Song" and "Before They Was Killed in a Car Crash", I think you can form a pretty good mental image of where the rest of the album is coming from.

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Blue Pine - slowhorse or traversing the canadian wilderness father and son search for the elusive wife and mother

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Without a doubt, Seagull is On The Rise makes The Bloody Hand reissue worth owning even if you already have a copy of the original. But don't stop there. Also seek out the first, self-titled Blue Pine album, which is still among my favourite records of all time. This song is a perfect example of the strange, otherworldly country music you'll find throughout the album: the kind of music only imagined by cough syrup drinkers asleep in the alleys of Nashville and Memphis. The music will be somewhat familiar to fans of Frog Eyes, but it's insistence on slowness and restraint reveals it as something different altogether, something perhaps more subtle and complex. For instance, as this song moves slowly through the first few verses, it gradually creates a kind of tension which, while never really very overt, makes the climax shouts of "I'm a liar!" and "Families of hoboes!" seem like the perfect, natural progression of everything that came before.

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[buy The Bloody Hand reissue and Blue Pine]