If the life of a band and the mood of an album can be encapsulated in one song, then “Arrived”, the lead track from Mal Madrigal’s forthcoming From the Fingers of Trees would be a fitting choice.

Electricity builds instantly from the opening cord as Spanish-style guitar gently pulls back the curtains revealing a stark, vast expanse of desert.  Gray, dirty mountains loom in the background.  Tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes enter stage left, prodded by a hollow electric guitar.  The camera pans to the right.  A village sleeps uneasy.  Smoke rises in the distance. 

Ennio Morricone is cracking his Italian knuckles somewhere, sitting on the edge of his seat.

Wispy acoustic guitar blends into rhythmic picking and strumming as the electric continues to poke.

A soft voice appears.  Drums fade in low. 

The scene builds lyrically and sonically in a pattern that will be repeated throughout the album.

The wind kicks up.  Prayers are whispered. 

Three minutes in and repeating the words “Will you arrive? Will you arrive?” the electric guitars do just that.  Like a storm rolling in across the plains, it opens up, unleashing the attack you knew was coming.  From over the hills the bandidos flood in.  Hidden soldiers are waiting for them, and a world that was quiet and eerie erupts into fire.

Lyrically, nothing like this is going on.  I’m ruining everything, I know and I’m sorry, but Mal Madrigal’s music has so many cinematic qualities you can’t help but watch the pictures that project on the screens in your mind. 

You feel this album in your stomach.  You feel this album on your scalp and on all of your little mammalian hairs as fireflies float from the speakers and descend upon you, hovering gently just above your skin.  

Diving into the lyrics you see things you weren’t picturing.  This world that spins as a CD and on vinyl is full of canyons, concealing treasures in caves and in shadows.  

The dust settles.  The camera pans away slowly.  The scene in front of you darkens.

Mal Madrigal’s From the Fingers of Trees, will be released far and wide on January 5^th, 2010.

You can pick up early copies at the release show on Saturday, December 26th at the Slowdown in Omaha. 

They will be playing this Sunday, November 22nd, at the Slowdown.

Links:

Official site: www.malmadrigal.com

myspace: www.myspace.com/malmadrigalmusic

Saddle Creek store: http://store.saddle-creek.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCOS&Category_Code=Mal_Madrigal

the Slowdown: www.theslowdown.com

Let’s move forward now to Grizzly Bear’s song Ready, Able, and Allison Schulnik’s odd and incredible film set to music, formally called a music video. 

The video opens with what looks like a kneecap’s perspective of walking through a field and into a clearing.  There and then we see two multi-colored yeti-like creatures eyeing each other from across a river.  Engaged in what might be a staring contest, but probably something much more significant, one of the creatures deflates and melts into the river.  His colors begin to blend, but not in the way watercolors blend into a brown.  The colors retain their integrity for the most part as they become a part of the water. 

Did I mention that this is claymation, or some similar medium?  Did I mention that the remaining creature has three little creatures that he feeds to a fourth, iguana-like creature that then turns into something resembling a frilled lizard, or Dilophosaurus (if you prefer creatures from the Jurassic period)? 

The remaining yeti-like creature then appears to get abducted or dematerialized by an alien craft.  Similar then to what always happens following dematerialization by aliens, everything goes Technicolor.

I’m not sure what happens now, or in the two minutes that led up to now, but little heads of creatures (possibly the botched rematerialization of the larger creature) are shown on museum pedestals transforming their shapes and expressions.  These shots are mixed with clips of the same creature (maybe), (pre-abduction) and another, less yeti-like, more a sumo wrestler-like creature composed of the same genetic building blocks.

I don’t know what the video “means”.  I don’t know what the song is about, but the combination of the two elicits an emotion that feels like sadness but manifests as confusion.  This video and song stay with you.  What it is and what it means isn’t as important as what it feels like. 

It’s unfortunate that we experience things like this for the first time only the first time.  It’s difficult to process anything during the premiere.  The second time is corrupted by the experience of the first, like in Tom McCarthy’s novel, Remainder.  Reproducing something degrades it.  It never feels like it did the first time, and no amount of money or effort can change that.  A first kiss can keep you up all night contemplating levitation and other wonderfully unrealistic things.  The kiss you get at the end of the day fifteen years later is nice, but it isn’t filled with the wonder of what could be, or what could float.  Maybe it is, I don’t know.

Below is a link to the video on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Puph1hejMQE

Below again is a link to an interview/performance from Grizzly Bear on NPR’s Sound Opinions

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=6349255

Grizzly Bear website: http://grizzly-bear.net/

Allison Schulnik’s website: http://www.allisonschulnik.com/

Last August I saw Bon Iver headline a very short, but good set at Minneapolis’ First Avenue.  Before playing the last song of the night, Justin Vernon apologized to the full room something to the effect of, “I’m sorry. We haven’t been a band that long, and just don’t have a lot of material.” 

He’s honest, I’ll give him that.

The EP begins with Blood Bank, an excellent track that would have fit nicely on For Emma.  The familiar strumming and resonance mixes well with the narrative delivered with his usual mix of charm and vocal range.  I’m sure it has found its way onto a number of road-mixes, including some I’ve already made myself.

The second track, Beach Baby, is again set to the characteristic strumming of Vernon’s guitar and the damn near tear-jerking soulful voice that carried us all away on For Emma.  The song begins to wrap up about 1:40 in with some guitar work that’s as sad and gorgeous as his voice.  Unfortunately, the song is very short.  Regrettably, this is where the album should have ended.

Babys, the third track, feels like a nightmare inspired by a track from George Winston’s Forest album.  I’m a fan of George Winston, but not when I feel like he could have stimulated this.  The piano on this track is relentless in its repetitiveness, like a spoiled six year old hell bent on torturing his parents.  The short reprieve we get from the clanging about half way through makes its reemergence 40 some seconds later that much more brutal.

The final track, Woods, seems like the accidental recording of someone who wanted to try out some new pedal effects.  Repeating the same uninspired stanza throughout the track took me back to the third song, which I can’t bear to mention again.

All this said, I am still looking forward to Bon Iver’s sold out September 19^th show in Omaha at the Slowdown.  More so, I’m very much looking forward to a solid second album from Bon Iver.  I hope it happens soon.