tense forms reviews

Andy Wagner
Horse Year
Tenseforms

File Under: Alt-country
RIYL: Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Jay Farrar, David Olney

Sure Andy Wagner can be more than a little sulky on Horse Year, his eight-song debut release, but he knows how to set a mood and carry it through. Wagner mixes a lonesome, high-plains western sound with inward-gazing moping in a familiar pattern. His voice is at turns rusty and reedy, and he plays most of the instruments on the album, primarily a mix of acoustic and electric guitars, to create a dusty, hazy atmosphere (Mark Benson of Lying in States adds some drums).

“Weak in the Knees” begins the album strongly, at once tough and gentle in tone. It’s the kind of song that earns the cliché “edgy.” Like Elliott Smith, Wagner likes to write waltzes with stiff, heavy percussion to create a martial feeling. There’s something naked and raw about that sound that makes it ideal for a little emotional melodrama, at which Wagner excels, and he repeats variations on it on the next track, “Nothing to Defend,” and later on the album.

High drama carries this record, and Wagner is most successful with it on songs like “Something’s Watching,” with its minor chords and whistling undertone of accordion. “What You Used to Be” is another moody piece, carried along by heavily muted and distorted lead electric guitar, Daniel Lanois-style, with a lyric that bemoans a lover lost to another man.

After that, though, Wagner seems to run out of gas. “Two Minutes” is a lazily paced instrumental interlude. And by the last couple of songs—“When I Leave” and “One Key”—Wagner has lost most of his momentum as moodiness finally overcomes melody. Those two plod along in a way that if I were in a more charitable mood I might compare to Leonard Cohen, but these don’t have the lyrical interest that helps to keep Cohen’s songs engaging. However, the wind chimes that hauntingly enter in at the end of “One Key” really are a nice, original touch, especially as they are the last sounds you hear on the album.

Andy Wagner has hammered out a pretty well defined place for himself in the world of contemporary singer-songwriter music. At least it seems as though he knows exactly what he’s after in terms of sounds and production, and that kind of confidence is what makes a good debut work.

• George, 12/16/03

Andy Wagner
Horse Year
Self-Released

Format Reviewed: CD

If fallen angels need a spokesman, Andy Wagner is the man they’d seek out to speak their piece. Repentant, tragically stubborn, aspiring to rise above the dark alleys and the nightmares of memory — these are the themes of the beautifully morose Horse Year. Here, Wagner conjures the spirits of the Old West in his steel guitar and sparse arrangements — but it’s his voice, haunted, though not without a melancholy smile, that makes the songs so compelling.

The album plays like a funeral mass, each track an ethereally-charged dirge that draws us in. “Weak in the Knees” churns to life amid a settling fog, regretful, accompanied by a church organ send-off. “Don’t worry ‘bout me / You can still carry on / ‘Cause I’ll be dead when you’re gone,” Wagner opines, though you might imagine this as the message of a man looking back from the next world. “Nothing to Defend” juxtaposes soaring guitar riffs and whiskey bar piano, the shadow of a gunfighter who’s fallen a step slow, riding headlong into the rain in search of the next sunset. These images lend an undeniable weight and immediacy to the album, but it’s the spectacularly bone-chilling, otherworldly reverberation of the pedal steel that stays with me every time I hear it. It’s there in the ending wash on the otherwise-amiable cowboy ballad “This World Can Be So Cruel”, and it’s revisited on the album’s final number, “One Key”. Here it resonates beside a wind chime lullaby as we drift along the river Styx, nestled beneath the stars and blissfully at peace with the horrors and the beauty of the world.

If I were more romantic or less sane, I’d say that I get the feeling Wagner writes his songs for the dead — for the ghosts who haunt his studio, who follow him home, drawn in by what must be his emotional whirlpool. He honors the Old West and all it stands for, the wide open spaces and spirits of the land, the loneliness of the open prairie and the choking grip of Manifest Destiny as it creeps westward, blotting out the big sky. We the living, safe in our houses and offices and cars, are the incidental audience, the ones lucky enough to hear what Wagner strums out in the dead of night.

— Justin Kownacki

Casey Meehan
Violet
Tense Forms

Format Reviewed: CD

A word to the wise for all of you aspiring musicians out there: make sure that Windows Media Player isn’t telling lies about you.

If the unsuspecting record reviewer, for instance, inserts Casey Meehan’s excellent album Violet into his computer’s DVD-ROM drive and launches said program, the album information that WMP accesses (from whatever magical source) will assign the disc to the world’s most pariahfied genre, Easy Listening. Recoiling in horror, said reviewer might quickly move this (once again, excellent, and moreover quite original) album to the bottom of his reviewing pile.

The reviewer in question was saved from just this course of action by another of Windows Media Player’s features, Auto-Play (Brett, for the love of God, download a better player app — Ed.). Before he could eject the disc, the rock ‘n klezmer strains of excellent opener “The Marigny” were wafting through his headphones, and the edgy guitar slab underpinning all of the cool-as-hell baritone sax, clarinet and vocals was more than enough to assure him that the mistake was in the database.

From the seedier side of New Orleans, Meehan goes immediately to church. It seems, at least for the length of the second track, that Mr. Meehan is a member in good standing of the First Baptist Church of The Blessed Tom Waits, as he and Ms. Sarah Renee Bertsch inform us of their intention to “hunt my redemption with a shovel and a chain” over a swampy mishmash of revival furor and imprecations.

At about this point, you might find yourself ready to send off an angry e-mail to Mr. Gates, demanding that he remedy his company’s mischaracterization of an impressive young artist (Note to self: Must explain to Brett how online music databases work. — Ed.). And no one would blame you, especially after enjoying the transcendent, fuzzed-out bliss of “Wounds”, with its tom-heavy chorus intro and complicated, proggy bridge. Or the Primo Levi-referencing ruminations of “Who Will Be Saved”. Or the keyboard-led raveup of “Do Right”. But then, as you listen to the murder fantasy of “Every Star That Shines” (which would make an excellent compare-and-contrast study with Radiohead’s similarly Dixieland-referencing “Life In A Glass House”), you’ll realize that you have better things to do, like listen to the album again. And again.

Perhaps, for the most metal-addicted among us, Meehan and company’s complex, multifaceted, tracks (like the funky Rhodes piano-and clarinet intro to the instrumental “Via Deception”) are indistinguishable from Barry Manilow, Air Supply, John Tesh, Kenny G and all of the other (what’s the word?…oh, yes) shit that makes Easy Listening such a black hole on your radio dial. Then again, maybe the person who created Violet‘s database record has a tin ear. Whatever the reason, hopefully Meehan and his band’s skillz will overcome their misclassification and ensure that this album gets the receptive ears, and the glowing reviews, it deserves.

— Brett McCallon

the autumn-waking
the loudest birthday ever
Tense Forms
•••••6••••

Once the challenging origami-like packaging of the autumn-waking’s the loudest birthday ever has been conquered, what remains is five songs that tackle some combination of art punk and shoegaze, with varied success. The EP fires off with a driving song reminiscent of Sky Cries Mary, complete with haunting female vocals and trance-inducing repetitive lyrics. From there, however, the energy is lost. The songs become more and more instrumental, and the female vocals disappear almost completely and are replaced by unconvincing male voices and sampled spoken pieces. By far, this group’s music works best when powerful siren-like vocals transcend the grinding melodies. If the singing on the first two tracks is performed by guest S. Renée Bertsch, then permanent autumn-waking members Allison Stanley and Joshua Dumas should consider bringing her into the group full-time. - Catherine P. Lewis

Andy Wagner, “Horse Year”
Tense Forms

Every once in a while, an artist comes along who sounds born into a sound, like while in the womb his parents played him classic records that he just absorbed into his psyche. Andy Wagner has that quality, like there’s nothing else in this world he could be doing because it just wouldn’t fit. This multi-instrumentalist uses guitar, keyboard, bass, and accordion to construct pop songs that defy the typical trappings to derive at something more. His breathy, Dylan-esque voice talks of death, human relationships, beginnings and ends, and all over a bed of western influences and tossed with rockabilly and country rock. The result belies the DIY formula he adheres to, as Horse Year has the feel of a solid group of players that have been polishing their skills in bars for five years, playing for crowds wading in sawdust and peanut shells. For the most part, though, Wagner wore all the hats himself, including the engineering and production work, with a scant few guests. While they add some much needed flavor, including the stable drumming of Mark Benson, this is Wagner’s show, and rightfully so. Narrative and introspective, he has the presence of a soul who will be writing and recording for a long time. “Weak in the Knees” and “Something’s Watching” speak of the inevitable day many of us spend most of our lives trying to pretend will never come, with the latter infusing just enough scare tactics. The ambling waltz and saloon piano of “Nothing to Defend” and “When I Leave” with its shuffle and faded accordion are definite highlights, but this album belongs to “What You Used to Be,” all echoed guitar and steady rhythm over laments of the past. Wagner is also a member of the Delta Still, and also works in Chicago area theatre, but this well-crafted debut shows he has the ability to overshadow it all like the dark side of the moon with his own work. - Rob Devlin