a not-so-favorable blurb on Arise Therefore.....taken from Magnet
Issue #23
Poets make lousy tunesmiths - ever heard any Allen Ginsberg records? - and
Will Oldham is one hell of a poet. "Play with it while you still have
hands/A desperate lack of demands/I can't offer a thing better than
dying/So take it," he "sings" in his trademark squashed yelp on "You Have
Cum." Few lyricists currently practicing could match Oldham's word power
in terms of reach, nuance and the kind of ambiguity that sets the mind
reeling. (I mean just what the hell is going on in "A Sucker's Evening"
when, out of nowhere, he sings "Make a noise/Crack a glass/Hold his arms,
I'll fuck him/Fuck him with something/The fuck, he deserves it."). But as
complex and inventive as his lyrics are, Oldham's songwriting is
mind-numbingly one dimensional: a plink of the guitar strings, a two-chord
thrum of bass, a single plaintive piano chord, a cracked voice signifying
emotion rather than embodying it. It's a formula that's reached its high
water mark with the song "Trudy Dies" in 1993. That was three years ago.
If this generation's Van Dyke Parks ever finds his Brian Wilson, he'll be
dangerous. Somebody call Slint.
I'd have to assume that this person (Jonathan Valania) wouldn't be too
fond
of "Days In The Wake" either. I've yet to come across a better 27-minute
effort.
return to
the pulpit...