[The rattle-snake’s] eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids. She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.
—Benjamin Franklin
(Source: The Rattlesnake Tells The Story)
Andrew Adkins has written, produced and performed this album with the unflinching eye of a rattlesnake. This is by his own admission his most personal album. "All masterpieces are personal statements." I learned that in art school. This album has no such pretensions, but it is for me a soundtrack for our times iconic in its observations and as potent as rattlesnake venom. This album begins with a panic attack and ends in with the longing for home in a prayer of reconciliation.
Remember when you waited in line at the record store to buy that special new album that summed up what you were feeling before you felt it? Some band that managed to create more than a song, but a sonic world for each song that could change you right to the core. That's what I am saying about this album. It's the game changer. The album you didn't know you needed. This album is the soundtrack for these times, and a rallying call to get it together and join with the band. This album is hope, and it will hurt you back to life again.
"If ya feel, ya healed."
I generally begin listening to this album to kick out the jimmy jams against my own current state of fear and trembling, but Adkins then takes me on a journey through the fear into the heart of hope as a necessary corrective to fend off our mutual despair. I have never once been able to listen to that panic attack anthem "Satelite Mind" without taking the journey through to the warm wisdom and heart full of love and longing of "Random Cloud Patterns" at the end. This album has the keen eye of an unflinching observer, but at its soul this music is the very emblem of magnanimity and true courage.
It is necessary here to acknowledge the remarkable detail in the production of this music. Andrew Adkins got a big paycheck for guitar work for the NFL, and he went out and bought a mellotron. Who does that! He is therefore, by default, a progressive rock artist now. There's a rule somewhere. All kidding aside, I have listened to this album for pleasure and sometimes NEED for more than a couple of months, and it reveals greater and greater little sweet details with each listen. Each song is a sonic environment full of little sweet details that always support the song.
I just now first time heard a little rhymic acoustic guitar figure hidden in the right channel that twinkles like a star in the heavens of the song. There's a banjo for a moment adding the imprimatur of honesty right where it is needed. This is a labor of love by one of Nashville's celebrated hired guns, and a real good man with an eye that don't blink and a heart full of hope. We all need a little sunshine. When I need a lift after the horror of the news or some personal panic, this album first shows me it understands the pain better than I do and then it brings me to the truth and reconciliation of a prayer that soothes my Stoic heart. It is never enough to identify the problem, and nobody believes a bromide anymore in a world where the panacea always seems to come from a devil in disguise. We need love and wisdom and the source of that is that long neglected Heart Sutra. Andrew Adkins has dug deep to "bring it." I know it hurts to do that. We have discussed that!
Franklin had to be thinking about his plan long before he left for Albany because an article dated May 9 appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette calling for the colonies to unite against French aggression. The article was accompanied by an illustration depicting the colonies as a segmented snake and bearing the caption, “JOIN, or DIE.” At the time there was a common superstition that if the segments of a snake were put back together before sunset it would come back to life. This was probably one of the inspirations for the illustration.[4]
—Bob Ruppert in the article "The Rattlesnake tells the Story"
It was a common superstition in Benjamin Franklin's America that "if the segments of a snake were put back together before sunset it would come back to life." That forgotten myth works just as well for the world. I believe this "Rattlesnake Motions" music seeks to perform just such a feat of magic. Come meet me in back of of the barn. Bring whatever segment of States you have on hand. Bring a little part of the World with you. We have some magic to do to save the times and make this a place where we can lay our heads, where we can just be our selves. We can do this!
Bonus review of the first song Satellite Mind!
While preparing this review of Rattlesnake Motions, I became acquainted with rock/heavy metal guitarist turned Nuevo Flamenco, Samba, Montuno, Rumba Flamenco and Guajira artist Russ Hewitt, whose collaboration and duets with Nuno Bettancourt, Marty Friedman, Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah and will be part of a subsequent review. I asked him to listen to the first cut on this album called "Satellite Mind," and this is the very insightful and articulate comment I got back on Messenger:
It's like a modern day 60's band groove. 'Trippy' effects and sounds, 'airy' chorus, pentatonic main riff, etc. It also has a Queens of the Stone Age vibe to it as well. I can see the angle he's going for, which is good because it'll separate him from what's out there!
—Russ Hewitt
The Real–Time "Typing While Listening" Review
This is what it is like to listen to this album, while typing real fast to describe the music. I have listened to this album for more than a month whenever I needed it, and that was often. I have heard it on earbuds while riding in the back of a "camioneta" to the store. I have started the day and ended the day with this album. Each time, I put on the first song because "Satellite Mind" draws me in with that rhythm and a hook and what Andrew Adkins describes as a song about his own panic attack. I am concerned about Andrew, but I had my very own panic attack at this past Monday. I will say right here that this song accurately depicts that lack of oxygen, floating in space, uncomfortable, anxious experience. What makes it healing is that it also makes me want to dance. Okay, here we go:
Satellite: Something that is separated from or on the periphery of something else but is nevertheless dependent on or controlled by it.
"Satellite Mind." Oh my! This works every time! "The panic rushes in" and yet I am dancing in my chair. Sure, I know it is a panic attack, but I just watched the news and I am pretty sure this is a Progressive Rock semi-psychedelic barn dance about the times we live in. Holy Smoke! That guitar solo is dead bang right on as expected. There are too many atmospheric sounds to mention, but that mellotron is absolutel perfect. I have been hooked by this song for weeks, this album never lets me go! Then the genius part: A little caesura or pause to set up the deeply emotional guitar solo. Andrew could carry on an entire conversation with licks and power chords and say more than a color commenter on CNN or MSNBC. I intended to listen to one song. I always do, but the "Casio" inspired weird-ass little swimmy timed figure comes on with "Broken Fangs" and I am at some Odelay-era Beck-style hipster dance hall, likely spinning my back on the cardboard and kicking out the jimmy jams. The state of confusion was never so appealing. The song has "chapters" and it tells a quirky little story never letting my attention wander. "Mystic symbols and profane noises" gets me, though I don't quite know why. This catchy and swirling dervish ends with a echo chamber of some jearing Woody Woodpecker type thing!
Okay we have been caught up and spun around. Time for some stability! "Divided Lines" comes on with period rock 'n' roll in power pop and pure wisdom! Preach it, my brother! "If chaos is your best friend, let's hang up and try this again!" There's reference the soul's liberator, and joining together with the band! "We're better together than these divided lines." Ah sweet! How the hell does he find the sweet side of absolute fear and loathing in these times? "The future is at your command!" Thank you, Andrew!
Here's something Bowie would listen to and maybe admire! "Mysterious Engines" further examines the weapons of mass confusion with the sad observation "gone are the safety nets." We are in free fall. I knew that before, but the idiom here is unflinchingly careful and there is love in the language. I don't know what you call this beat, but it is strong and beautiful.
"Beautiful and Free" is a necessary hymn to the young and youthful in all of us. "Don't let the words define you or make you afraid. We all live life and these lessons we all learn. You're only young once. Take your time and make it last!" I would definitely put money in the basket when the offering comes around for this. "If we can all just work together and try hard to be kind." Oh man! I needed that. Those accurate observations were getting a little uncomfortable.
BANG! This has an industrial power beat sounds like smelting iron. Everyone has a short fuse. Once again, the news must have turned itself back on. "Death Rattles" beats out Armageddon to a Nuevo Pop Bang jearing, unsentimental dance on the grave of "feeling safe." "Disinformation highway" stops me cold. Yep. Andrew nailed it again. I am going to need little break from this honesty. I may need some Sponge Bob before this is over!
Quebrado: bankrupt, uneven, rough, zigzag, faltering, broken, cracked, fractured, shattered, distraught.
"Quebrado" is "sitting here waiting for the world to disappear." Cute flute figure just comes out of nowhere, but we are telling the damn truth again. Andrew is disturbingly careful with his words. Tells me it keeps him up at night. "Drunk in Hollywood" observations seem to disuade me from escaping this tumult. There is some swimmy keyboard that reminds me of Merry Go Round music on a spooky ride. "No one here gets out alive." Now I heard that before. Sadly, true. Try not to think about it. How does he make it sound cool? We are suddenly at a coming-of-age party in the Spanish speaking part of Silverlake in my dream. The song fades.
"Into Dust" is a love song. "I know this is where we end." Oh boy. Where is "More Than Words" when you need it? I have felt all this Andrew is singing. "Cuts like a diamond" comes from another part of the forest. I can't get you out of my brain and haunting in my sleep hurt in a familiar way. "Turns into dust." This is a dream after a breakup. The music is wonderful. The relationship disintegrating. Warren Zevon wrote songs like this (Carmelita), but this sounds nothing like that. If you can face it as it was, this may remind you where you once were. There is a plaintive ending with the brilliance and sweet spacey quality of that mellotron.
Wow! Big change! "White Street Rose" has John Prine in the wings nodding with approval. The observations are sweet and quirky and this song is absolutely perfect COUNTRY on a prog rock pop bang album. And it fits so sweet, I can't imagine it any other way. The words are great! Reminding me of John Prine's "Linda Goes to Mars" or John Gorka's "The Sentinel." I thought it was a complaint song, but it is more of a sweet tribute. "She would kiss just like Minnie Pearl, and curse just like a goddam sailor." I found where that reference came from. Andrew thanked me. Minnie Pearl did a bit on Hee Haw about a kissing booth. Nice Break! Needed that.
"The Explosions in My Head" returns to accuracy and another distinct and infectious sonic world. The guitar does something mysterious and wonderful. "If you're lost and alone, the road less traveled with always bring you home." I know that reference. Robert Frost. Damn! Love that reference.
We need an epilogue and a prayer and "Random Cloud Patterns" manages miraculously to bring me back to my heart with unguarded friendship in the form of a song. This song is sung directly to the listener as wisdom to the public. The tone here is heartbreaking because it is hope. Only hope can break your heart when the alternative would be to become numb. I am not sobbing uncontrollably at the end of this album, but I am moved.
My friend has shown me that he sees how bad things are and how dangerous. He knows we must come together, but there is scant evidence that this is happening quite yet. But instead of escaping into a chemical fog, or taking the poison of hate, or crying in his beer, or seeking power, or growing cold.... He sees the spec of light down the end of the tunnel and he reminds us all what it was like to believe in a home where we are welcome, where we can be ourselves.
That is a call to action, but not the preaching kind. We can make this our home, if we work together. That's the part that gets one little discrete tear forming in the corner of my left eye and it just sits there with my eye wide open because...
Rattlesnakes don't blink.
There’s times when you feel unwelcome full of anxiety
It’s okay we all have been
Judgmental stares is enough to shatter your heart
Just let it go don’t let them tear you apart
Oh, oh how I wish I had a place to hang my head
Oh, oh how I wish I had a place where I could just fit in…
Where I could be myself
Where I could speak my mind
Where it will all be alright
Where I will never be lonely
Never be looked down on
Where we will never grow old
Where I can love somebody
Where I can just be myself
Where I can be myself
The Billy’s Music Without Borders Index of Reviews, Interviews & Discussions
Email: billymwb@gmail.com
Submissions accepted. Send a link, not a CD. Lyrics and artwork plus any information is appreciated. Access to artists for interviews encouraged.
Good
ReplyDelete