Loose Fur
Loose Fur
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Loose Fur
Loose Fur
Drag City, 2003
RiYL: Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jim O’Rourke, The Velvet Underground, the jammier side of Yo La Tengo |
These albums aren't usually remembered like those of the Derek And The Dominoes of the world. Instead, they wait to be discovered and cherished in damp basement record stores in trendy urban neighborhoods. Surely, this will be the fate that awaits Loose Fur, a collaboration between Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy; the band's new drummer, Glenn Kotche; and official "fifth Beatle" to seemingly every American rock band these days, Jim O'Rourke.
Although these are actually the first recordings by the trio of Chicagoans who became friends after playing together at the 2000 Noise Pop Festival, they are the last fruits of that friendship to come to market. Tweedy and Kotche backed up O'Rourke on his fine 2001 solo album, Insignificance, and O'Rourke's deft mixing touches refined Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot into last year's rock masterpiece.
That Loose Fur won't light a fire in the ears of the record-buying public isn't due to any lack of quality -- just the opposite, in fact. But anyone who would consider this a "supergroup" has long since shaved their head and slapped mud on their face, glaring at mainstream popular music with a maniacal Kurtz-like glare of mistrust.
Too bad for the rest of the world, though. Loose Fur is a rarity among collaborations from established musicians. The talents of each participant don't sound redundant, as is often the case with these projects. Instead, Tweedy, O'Rourke and Kotche push each other in exciting directions, with songs building on the contributions of each. An electric current of experimentalism rushes through the album's six winding tracks.
Folk music serves as a foundation and common musical language. But from there, songs take off in all manner of directions, while the players deconstruct song structures and build them back up again. The album constantly reveals new levels of information, sounding better with each spin.
O'Rourke's "Elegant Transaction," for example, begins as a fingerpicked folk song that would sound at home on either of his last two albums. Tweedy ups the dynamic ante by providing a vocal counterpoint to O'Rourke in a manner reminiscent of John Lennon's backup vocals on Paul McCartney's "Getting Better." From there, Kotche's galloping percussion leads the song into an extended rhythmic jam involving drums, banjo and piano. On "So Long," Tweedy's strangled guitar playing and Kotche's off-kilter percussion give the effect of a grandfather clock being unwound and destroyed.
Loose Fur's production is minimalist, to say the least. Tweedy has said in interviews that the musicians limited themselves to only one overdub each after playing each song live. The result is a dry, sparse sound that leaves plenty of space in the songs. The album's opening tune, the unfortunately named "Laminated Cats," began life on Wilco's YHF demos (with a better name, "Not For The Seasons") as a wall-of-sound pop song, filled to the brim with odd-sounding vintage instruments. Here, the trio strips the song bare to a polyrhythmic, tribal beat, Tweedy's vocals and some electronic noise. Its barely held-together melody erupts with a menacing Link Wray-like guitar solo halfway through. The change gives an ominous tone to Tweedy's vocals about someone passively watching as the seasons change around him, making me wonder just why the narrator is "hiding from close friends and weeding out his weekends."
Tweedy sings all of his vocals on the album with a dry delivery that lends his songs a melancholy air. "You Were Wrong" slows down to match his stoner-speed vocals, with an aesthetic that would have fit on an early post-Beatles solo album, punctuated by O'Rourke's Sonic Youth-style guitar pinging. Tweedy sounds resigned rather than angry when he sings "You were wrong / when you leave" to a departed lover.
"Chinese Apple" is the most fully formed song on the album, rivaling Tweedy's best atmospheric Wilco songs, such as "Why Would You Wanna Live" and "One By One." It begins with Tweedy singing a lilting folk tune, which builds into a swirling, hypnotic guitar jam that reaches to the clouds, revealing Kotche atop a mountain hammering out softly circling drum rolls. The effect is sublime, delivering listeners to a Velvet Underground-rock jam dreamland.
The three players in Loose Fur have said they want to continue their collaborations as a band in the future. With "Chinese Apple" an indication of what they are capable of producing, I'll be among those anticipating the next Loose Fur album as much as subsequent efforts by Wilco and O'Rourke.
PATRICK KASTNER | Affectionately known as Cousin Patty (yes, it's a "Throw Momma From The Train" reference), Patrick Kastner is a designer for the Columbus Post-Dispatch.