Virgil Shaw
Quad Cities
Future Farmer Recordings

by William Michael Smith

He had a big mouth with crooked teeth
Like china leaning by the sink
So clean they were almost blue
So blue they were almost see-through
-- "Water Color"

Virgil Shaw's Quad Cities is one of those minimalist, understated, seemingly unpolished and unvarnished albums that takes a few listenings to grasp. It literally screams "No commercial potential." But eventually, despite the droll, squeaky delivery and the sparse, choopy presentation, the lyrics begin to thrash that obstinate, lazy mental muscle, the attention snaps out of its ordinary rut, and the ears begin to register the special qualities, the polish, the varnish, the odd but brilliant production flourishes. Pretty soon I've got the thing in my player all the time and my wife is giving me that "has he over-medicated himself again" sidelong glance.

Shaw's surface simplicity masks complex lyrical and musical undercurrents. Despite a general minimalism, there is nothing direct and linear here. Think sensitive, super-observant singer-songwriter meets alternative country hillbilly punk and you're getting somewhere in Virgil Shaw's musical ballpark. Some of the tracks have such a slow, ponderous, stuck-in-quicksand flow you want to feel for a pulse, call a doctor to check for vital signs. But once you find the pulse, you realize the patient is nowhere near dying. This is not an album for manic listeners looking for fast tempos, big riffs, and shouting. But simmer down and lay back, and this album will crawl to you and eventually wiggle its way right through your stoutest defenses.

Like Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay, Shaw's voice has a fragile quiver, a might-crack-at-any-moment quality that works with his dusty, neo-Depression Woody Guthrie lyrical wryness. Shaw has a photographer's sense of angle, perspective, and composition. His lyrics are visual, penetrating, and astoundingly prismatic in their abstract ability to transcend the common to find those unusual qualities that turn the lives of everyday people into something very un-everyday and notable. The trick is in Shaw's attention to telling physical details and his recognition (and passive acceptance) of psychological and emotional motives and results. His portrayal of an enigmatic woman in "Volvo," a country-rock moaner, is Shaw at his lyrical best.

She came down in a primer grey Volvo
And hangin' out the side was the dress she wore inside
And her parents used to hang around in biker bars
With "Cocaine Blues" bouncin' off the redwood walls
She said that she would sleep in guitar cases
Ah, it's 5 a.m. in the morning if she calls

According to Shaw, these were songs that didn't fit the format of Dieselhed, his rock band that has become an institution of sorts in the San Francisco music community over its seven-year life. Shaw's Quad Cities characters are often damaged goods, folks who didn't fit on the mainstream train when it left for the suburbs, misfit characters from the Kerouac world.

Oh, he saved up the money
Now it's out on the lawn
And there's cigarettes on the dashboard
But the engine is gone
He needs a place he can get away
From the anger inside
He needs a place he can hide away
So he pretends to drive

And his brother lives somewhere in town
Building dollhouses and burning them down

The guitar playing on Quad Cities, mostly by Shaw's cousin Matt Hall, is designed to fool the ear. There is a hazy, sedated quality emphasized by the slow tempos and sparse playing, but there is an almost maddening underlying virtuosity that pleasantly tickles the auditory senses with its oddity. On tracks like the quiet but intense "For Your Precious Love," Shaw's band turns minimalism into something complicated and very pleasing. The production features subtle uses of instruments like a saw (for percussive rhythm on one track), Chinese trumpets, and a burbling vibraphone in unlikely musical circumstances.

Truth in advertising demands that we tell you that if you like your music linear, homogenized, easily understandable, and headed for the Top 40 with a bullet, skip Quad Cities. Specifically because it can't be digested in one easy listening, because you can't sing all the words the second time you hear them, this is one of those unusual, blatantly artistic albums that radio seems to be in perpetual flight from. And that's a damn shame, because Quad Cities deserves something more than the anonymity and commercial oblivion it is surely destined for.

I pull the knife toward my thumb
In the most delicate demeanor
The blade kisses my thumb
But it doe-oe-oes not bleed 'er

I wonder if I can get away with hitting the PLAY button again?

*Virgil Shaw's Quad Cities is just one of several promising and unusual albums from San Francisco's Future Farmer label (www.futurefarmer.com).



Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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