Summary
The veterans who ran Run On,
drummer Rick Brown and bassist Sue Garner of
Fish & Roses,
plus guitarist Alan Licht of
Love Child,
and violinist Katie Gentile,
showed how prog-rock could yield engaging songs and not only difficult
constructs. Start Packing (1996) was a festival of instrumental lunacy, brainy hypnosis, eccentric arrangements, and lightweight cacophony that mostly stuck to the format of the pop song.
The oneiric folk-rock of No Way (1997), inconspicuously raised on acid-rock and Indian music, homaged the classics (Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young) while steering away from classic rock.
Nothing in these albums was obvious.
Every note was where it was because "that" was not where it should have been,
if one were a traditional composer.
Brown and Garner's vision of music was a place where
we should (obviously) all have been but have never even dreamed of being.
Still (1999), credited to Garner and Brown, was, de facto, a late addition to the Run On canon.
If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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I Run On sono il progetto di tre stagionati veterani del progressive-rock
di New York: il batterista Rick Brown (Fish And Roses,
V-Effect),
la cantante Sue Garner (ex Shams e
Fish & Roses),
e il chitarrista Alan Licht
(ex Blue Humans e Love Child).
Sul singolo di debutto, Days Away (Ajax, 1994),
la formazione era completata dal
tastierista David Newgarden (ex Mad Scene), ma nel 1995 gli subentro`
la violinista Katie Gentile (anche negli Special Pillow).
L'EP On/Off (Matador, 1995) li presento` con il pop bizzarramente
barocco di Into The Attic.
Start Packing (Matador, 1996) e` il disco che promuove i Run On fra i
protagonisti del noise-rock di New York.
Tried e` esemplare di come il loro sound si formi
spontaneamente dal nulla: una foschia di accordi dissonanti
(compresa una fisarmonica) muta in minimalismi
di chitarra mentre Garner prende a recitare come la piu` trasecolata Patti Smith
e la batteria incalza trascinante come in un raga indemoniato.
Tell Me e` una ballata country resa irriconoscibile da un coacervo di
eccentricita` riprese dal folk-rock psichedelico degli anni '60.
E` un disco soprattutto di piccole gioie per buongustai:
la dizione solenne di Garner sul passo marziale di Baap,
le schitarrate dissonanti di Miscalculations (anche su singolo),
la trance di You Said, per distorsioni acute e fanfare di trombe.
Il formato dell'album
e` ancora quello della canzone rock, ma ottenuta tramite la metamorfosi di
partiture strumentali irruenti e stralunate, arrangiamenti bizzarri che
impiegano strumenti dell'orchestra, soffici melodie da anni Sessanta e
ritmiche sghembe che sembrano sempre contraddire tutto il resto.
L'apice di questa prassi viene toccato forse nel cerimoniale magico di
Go There, propulso da una carica tribale, condotto da un canto oscuro,
solcato da assoli di organo gospel, in folle crescendo, sempre piu` "nero" e
ipnotico, a inseguire fantasmi di Nice, Iron Butterfly e Amon Duul.
Il resto e` un circo di trasformazioni alla Dr Jekill:
il folk-rock marziale dei Walkabouts in In Strength
il Lou Reed piu` malinconico in A To Z,
il Neil Young piu` nevrotico in X-Mas Trip.
Il disco va in gloria con gli otto minuti di Surprise, un flusso ipnotico di
jamming scalcagnato, a meta` strada fra raga e pow-wow, una specie di Sister
Ray del giorno dopo.
Gli arrangiamenti sono il non plus ultra dell'eccentrico. Ogni canzone e`
affidata rigorosamente al trio rock di chitarra, basso e batteria, ma
all'interno di quella struttura teoricamente granitica trova sempre il modo
piu` insolito di ospitare uno strumento alieno (marimba, oboe, xilofono,
tromba, fisarmonica, ...). Le armonie sono ulteriormente straniate da improvvisi
picchi di sonorita` estreme: distorsioni da incubo, dissonanze dadaiste,
intermezzi cacofonici.
Il folk-rock onirico di No Way (Matador, 1997) si
appoggia a motivi elementari, ma viene stravolto da un uso eclettico dei ritmi
e da tormente chitarristiche che non concedono respiro.
Il disco e` una giostra di tiepidi raga in crescendo, di lividi
viaggi lisergici, di ritornelli sornioni che si librano in distorsioni da
capogiro, di improbabili miscele di Jonathan Richman, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed e
Neil Young e di immense dosi di Can e Jefferson Airplane.
Le loro canzoni si sono fatte piu` compatte e "canzoni".
Lo strimpellio inetto alla Violent Femmes che apre As Good As New cede
il passo al loro piu` forte boogie elettrico di sempre e al loro motivo piu`
pop di sempre. Out For A Walk incalza a ritmo galoppante all'ombra di un
duetto spettacolare fra violino e chitarra. Ropa Vieja fa il verso alle
progressioni nervose di Patti Smith.
Non che siano diminuiti gli esperimenti.
I Run On compiono miracoli di equilibrio, come nell'armonia al tempo stesso
delicata e violenta di Lab Rats, nella ritmica paradossale di 1/2 Of 1/2,
nella psichedelia ineffabile di Bring Her Blues, nella lunga trance
orientale di Days Away (anche su singolo).
Con la violinista e Garner nei panni della folksinger (Something Sweet,
Look, Anything You Say),
i Run On sembrano spesso una versione d'avanguardia dei Walkabouts.
Non a caso il disco va in gloria
con un'epica ballata come Sinnerman (revisione di un traditional),
condotta a ritmo marziale e
contrappuntata da un trascinante strimpellio country and western, nove minuti
di canto passionale e di corride strumentali quasi a parodiare i complessi del
rock sudista degli anni '70.
Piu` che mai i miracoli del loro sound si reggono sull'asse Brown-Licht,
il primo uno dei piu` grandi batteristi di tutti i tempi e il secondo una
mente diabolica, che sta tentando di trasportare in ambito chitarristico lo
stile minimalista di LaMonte Young.
Contemporanei all'album sono usciti
gli EP Scoot (Sonic Bubblegum, 1997),
con splendidi inediti come Complainer (una composizione minimalista di
Licht), Hit Run (quasi post-rock) e
Renee Away (che fa venire in mente Patti Smith),
e Sit Down (Matador, 1997), con Owe You, quasi gotica e industriale, e Double Gemini.
Brown, oltre ai Run On e ai Les Batteries, ha anche un trio chiamato Timber,
che ha registrato un album per la Rift.
Gentile suona negli Special Pillow con ex membri degli Yo La Tengo
e degli Hypnowheel.
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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Peach Cobbler is a collaboration between Run On's Rick Brown and Sue Garner
and French
accordionist Monique Alba and guitarist Dominique Grimaud.
Georgia Peach (Ajax, 1995) contains
avantgarde blues, combining fragmented noises and languid dirges
(Come On In My Kitchen, Indian Giver).
Sue Garner, this untamed veteran of Fish And Roses and Shams, released
To Run More Smoothly (Thrill Jockey, 1998), a muted record in the style
of an intimate singer-songwriter, assisted in minor parts by such friends as Chris Stamey
(DB's),
Rick Brown (Run On) and Georgia Hubley
(Yo La Tengo).
The sunny melody of
Nightfall, the
nasal register, and Southern accent bring to mind the
Walkabout, but Garner is a child (now seasoned) of progressive-rock, and can afford far more complex scores: like in the surreal arrangement of Glazed, which boasts elements at once cacophonous and minimalist, or in the avant-garde music mini-concerto of Sense Enough, halfway between
This Heat
and
Soft Machine,
or in the instrumental piece Something Else, emanating an almost religious intensity. Closing the disc is the subdued ballad Continuous Play, originally recorded by the Shams.
Still (Thrill Jockey, 1999) is credited to Sue Garner and
Rick Brown, and it includes contributions by producer
Chris Stamey ( DB's), bassist Doug McCombs
(Tortoise),
guitarist Tara Key (Antietam) and Doug Weiselman
(on clarinet and saxophone).
When Garner is centerstage, the album sounds like the follow-up to
her To Run More Smoothly (Thrill Jockey, 1998).
Her eclectic songwriting, slightly offbeat and strongly personal, albeit
rooted in folk and country music, permeates the softly swinging trip-hop of
Swimmingly.
Brown's contribution can be felt mainly in the arrangement of the rhythms,
a key component of many of these songs:
African percussions and symphonic keyboards accent the global dance of
the instrumental ouverture Synthbug;
Damp Spirit's syncopated, industrial metronomy borrows from
Peter Gabriel's techno-pop;
Asphalt Road's lullaby flows like
a boogie train propelled by frantic gamelan-like percussions;
and the epic Fussy Fuss closes the album on a wildly distorted pow-wow
(the Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground performing
the national Navajo anthem).
The combination of Brown's rhythms with Garner's ethereal singing and
Weiselman's reeds yields surreal vignettes like Abosrbed, a cross
between Enya and Robert Wyatt.
Brown and Garner have been producing high-quality music for decades
and the basic tenet has always been to use non-conventional processes
while preserving harmony and song structure.
Nothing in their career is obvious and nothing on this record is.
Every note is where it is because "that" is not where it should be,
if one were a traditional composer. "That" turns out to be the natural place
to be for that note. Brown and Garner's vision of music is a place where
we should (obviously) all have been but have never ever dreamt of being.
Sue Garner's Shadyside (Thrill Jockey, 2002) takes advantage of
electronic and digital production techniques (and of the usual super-cast of
guests) to enhance her folk primitivism.
75 Dollar Bill, the New York duo of
Rick Brown and Che Chen (guitar), formerly of True Primes,
debuted with a series of cassettes and digital EPs before the LP
Wooden Bag (Other Music, 2015).
The album is mainly a showcase for Chen's virtuoso guitar playing, with
Brown limited to humble street percussion in instrumental compositions that
are made of irregular repetitive patterns.
The atonal peripatetic country blues Cuttin' Out (15:18) is
one of the greatest blues improvisations of the era, the first worthy
successor to Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man.
Hollis (6:36) is a more aggressive variant of the same concept,
a galloping raveup with loud and rowdy riffs competing with a quasi-ska guitar pulsation.
Slow Jumper's Harp (9:19) is more disjointed and syncopated, like a
pot of boiling water whose lid refuses to stand down.
hiccupping its way towards a slow decay like a malfunctioning machine that runs out of electricity.
The three main pieces are surrounded by brief free-jazz improvisations with horns.
The cassette Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock (Thin Wrist, 2016)
unleashed four more guitar-driven instrumental improvisations.
Earth Saw (7:19) begins with the
slow hypnotic repetition of a simple contrast, between a guitar riff that sounds like a factory device against guitar tones that mimic a church bell with
"hare krishna" style percussion.
Cheryl Kingan's droning saxophone joins the festive Celtic dance of Beni Said (12:27), which soon becomes an idiosyncratic duet between a singing saxophone and a drumming guitar with additional pulses from Andrew Lafkas's contrabass and Karen Waltuch's viola. After eight minute the guitar takes a detour into heavily distorted acid-rock but then returns to the Celtic motif for the final dance with the saxophone.
Carey Balch's tom-tom beat fires up the brief and frenzied Cummins Falls.
I'm not Trying to Wake Up (14:57) indulges in slower languid jamming with Cheryl Kingan's rhythmic saxophone providing counterpoint to the main riff and with a distant Indian-esque trumpet call (Rolyn Hu).
The double-LP I Was Real (Thin Wrist, 2019) is a more ambitious
and disorienting fusion of folk-rock, raga, psychedelia, minimalist repetition, world-music and free jazz.
The eleven-minute Every Last Coffee or Tea is another collective pseudo-Celtic dance like Beni Said with Cheryl Kingan's alto saxophone, Lafka's contrabass, Sue Garner's rhythm guitar and Karen Waltuch's viola gathering around the main guitar's swirling quasi-raga patterns to concoct a highly rhythmic mayhem.
By their standards, the lively Tetuzi Akiyama is a rockabilly ditty, with Chen's guitar bouncing around Sue Garner's brooding bass lines and engaging in a bluesy duet with Cheryl Kingan's baritone sax.
There are three tributes to Mauritania's "wezin" music, starting with
WZN#3 (Verso) in which Che Chen's amplified violin collides with the swarm of notes emitted by Kingan's saxophone, Garner's bass, Waltuch's viola, Barry Weisblat's keyboards and assorted percussion, and ending with
the eight-minute WZN#3, the most grating and jittery.
The hysterical guitar solo of There's No Such Thing As A King Bee is
no less dervish-esque in nature, just on steroids.
There is, however, a bit of indulgence in the way some pieces drag on for too long. It takes nine minutes for I Was Real to shake out of its initial sleepy languor, and then Karen Waltuch's distorted viola drone (echoing John Cale's viola in the Velvet Underground) slowly becomes more prominent and eventually remains alone. Its 17 minutes could easily have been cut down to 8 or 9.
The ten-minute three-movement New New has a stale mid-section of droning guitar and a trivial coda of bluesy guitar over maracas.
75 Dollar Bill used
rehearsal jams and live performances to make
Power Failures (Self-released, 2020), which contains lengthy
pieces like
Power Failure #2 (12:16),
Snow Jumper's Harp (8:56),
15 (IRA) (11:25),
Another Jumper's Harp (10:09) and
8WZN / Montreiul / Gcona / In the Noguchi Garden in Long Island City (29:27).
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