I’m terrible in my wrongness, in my refusal or inability or misguidedness to not let the words poetic or musical slack into the other territory. To quote Short Hand—a poet is not a musician. So I guess I’m saying the opposite too is yep. This cannot be definite (wait for it wait for it) but I can’t help myself. I know poets and I know musicians (sure sure some are both but of two body-deep places their words/songs radiate). I see poets/poems bubbling from a yearning that can’t be relieved ever or for long. Music, man, it tingles and trickles out. (both are great doh doh dom different is all, for me)
Reason one realization—Bro. Stephen is poetic, people. On that new album, Baptist Girls, (HEAR IT HERE) the tingling scratches itself raw, a cloud to huff. A heartbreak, a quivering. But listen close. There it is the yearning that knows itself unquenchable. Yet it goes. The record and its fourteen songs (two-three min range—this seems important) shiver together almost like one long song interrupted by tiny gasps—whose? (FLIP THE RECORD). What makes this record make me break my rule is Bro. Stephen and his self exuding through that soft voice, that steady guitar, those lyrics all a big old hum letting out something unmistakable yet no no you can’t touch it.
Sure sure the music I love most (clangy loud a little sloppy) can explode a body, a person, a voice and be emotion BOOM. Same for this slowcoustic stuff that Bro. Stephen is a part of. But the emotion there, at least as I respond to/see it, exists as a reason to jam that song or a string to pull the parts together. I call this poetic, more importantly I like this Bro. Stephen album lots lots because it is evident how yearning fills this fellow, a loveable searching that overrides whatever is or isn’t happening musically.
GET IT HERE
SO STOKED TO SEE Bro Stephen AT THIS SHOW
