Virgil Shaw
Still Falling
Munich Records MRCD 233 (Europe)
Future Farmer Recordings (USA)
By Marianne Ebertowski
 For more than a decade
Virgil Shaw played "post-modern truck driving music"
with San Francisco's Dieselhed. In 2000 he made his solo-debut,
Quad Cities, on the small San Joaquin Valley label Future
Farmer and this year he is back with the delicately arranged
Still Falling. For the exquisite instrumental production
and orchestration, Shaw's old Dieselhed drummer and multi-instrumentalist
Danny Heifetz signed co-responsible. Heifetz has also co-written
some of the material with Shaw. Other old acquaintances turning
up on the album are Dieselhed bassist Atom Ellis and ex-American
Music Club Mark Eitzel who helps out on vocals on a couple of
songs and on "laugh" on another one.
Shaw's voice is only for acquired taste: sounding like a very
drunk Van Morrison at times and Roky Erikson on a really bad
trip at others, it seems to go all over the place, breaks at
unexpected moments, then suddenly gets up again and tiptoes into
a staggering falsetto. Like the infamous cuckoo bird it wobbles
as it flies. That it turns out to be a "pretty bird"
after all has a lot to do with this album's very tasteful orchestration.
In the opener "The Drawing," a character gets up
and out from a picture and disappears to a subtle waltzing tune
played on flügelhorn and fender rhodes electric piano (both
by Marc Capelle). Like the described drawing, the song and the
whole album is "crudely drawn but done with taste."
That Shaw is good at painting and describing pictures - not
surprisingly so, after all he is an art school graduate - he
continues to prove in "Golden Sun." This time, it's
the singer himself who gets up and flies, leaving behind what
for him is no more than "just a mystery and fucking history."
In the meantime and from his perspective:
...all that went wrong
is out on her lawn
...all this shit, I didn't quit
I just didn't want to see
it all end so miserably.
Well, being a bit of a wobbly cuckoo myself, I believe him.
It's probably all due to the "Wilderness Of This World,"
as described by Terry Allen and David Byrne in the next song
which is beautifully introduced by what sounds like a complete
Mexican orchestra including maracas, guïro and some very
sensitive guitar work by Shaw himself, later joined by various
keyboards and an "Algerian accordion." The wonderfully
lush orchestration turns the rather absurd lyrics, indeed, into
"a slow song that/ you can't stop dancing to," makes
you part of "this bunch of dancing fools" that runs
"crazy cross the wilderness of this world."
In "Wet Splashes," Virgil Shaw remembers a ride
"down the five" which ended with him leaving his girlfriend
behind "sleeping naked in a bean bag chair." They weren't
going anywhere, he concludes, but "at least we tried/ and
nobody had to die." The song starts with just Shaw singing
accompanied on piano, then joined by Marc Capelle's one man orchestra
and numerous percussion instruments giving it a rather spooky,
surreal atmosphere. Somehow you expect Tom Waits or Don Van Vliet
walking into the hot, desolate scenery any minute.
In the next song a bored and slightly agitated Shaw keeps
staring at the "Clock On The Wall," observing what
is going on and asking (himself) "where the hell have you
been," the chorus being built up nicely by Capelle's hammond
organ to a fiercy crescendo
The title track,"Still Falling," is a cinematic
account of a love story in December about which the singer ruefully
concludes that
what ended so dirty, raw and obscene
should have ended so clean
like snow on a silver screen.
To a sober soundtrack dominated by trumpet and hammond organ,
Shaw hick-ups like a demented Elvis Costello and beats the bespectacled
Brit hands down on soulful simplicity.
Then there's a mysterious piano and guitar entrenched story
about a couple of which he is a "Owner Operator" whereas
she waits tables. On the weekend they let it fall - but, somehow,
obviously, nothing good comes from it - not even a particularly
good song.
"Imaginary guitars" touches me because of its haunting
lyrics where someone suddenly "stands in a doorway/ running
his imagination/through imaginary guitars."
Whoever that person is, s/he is like all of us who ever had dreams
and didn't quite make it:
and what a drag it is, when you're getting old
and that's the only life you'll ever hold
and all that gear that you carried up the stairs
it all just disappears, and nobody hears.
The song starts with eery cymbals, vibes and distorted guitars
and is delivered by Shaw slurring the words like a drunk positively
incapable of even playing imaginary guitars.
The last thing you expect as a closer of this album is Merle
Haggard's "Sing Me Back Home," but that is as good as it gets.
It is the most extraordinary version I have ever heard of a song
that can be interpreted as the heartfelt prisoner's life and
death story as it is written and meant by Haggard to anything
faux, cliché and sentimental. Virgil Shaw somehow succeeds
in inhabiting this song, sings it with crackling falsetto as
if, indeed, his life depended on it, accompanying himself on
acoustic guitar. With Marc Capelle leading him out of prison
on hammond organ and with Danny Heifetz' ankle bells sounding
like shackles, Shaw's version turns into an achingly gut-wrenching
and heartbreaking experience.
Still Falling is certainly one of this year's oddest
and most genuine American(a) releases, not easily accessible,
but also heartstoppingly beautiful, once you have given yourself
the chance to let it get under your skin.
www.futurefarmer.com
www.munichrecords.com
www.virgilshaw.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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