consonant - debut cd
a rockin' literary critical analysis
by Sheri Hausey
How can we know? What can we know? Isn't the experiential data of our physical interactions the ultimate deceiver? Is life then simply
a visceral farce that alternates between the active moment and
emotion tinged memory plays? In his first full scale recording of
new material since the untimely (1983) dissolution of Boston's
post-punk/art-thrashing/pioneering "Mission of Burma", Clint Conley,
with an inspired and intricate musicianship that seemingly denies
any such hiatus could have occurred, takes on this conundrum of
relationship and creates an emotion driven roller coaster of songs
that sucks the air right out of you just before slamming you back in
your seat.
Indeed, Clint reasserts his musical creativity, puts down his bass, grabs his guitar and takes center stage as never before through songwriting even more subtly skilled than that of his twenty something self. In his new band's
self-titled debut, "consonant" with Chris Brokaw (Come, The New Year, Codeine) on guitar, Winston Braman (Fuzzy, The Count-Me-Outs) on bass, Matt Kadane (The New Year, Bedhead, Silkworm) on drums, Clint utilizes an harmonically evocative sound and
structural composition that sinks, swells, speeds head-on, and
treads lightly beneath his own lyrics and the poetry/prose of Holly
Anderson's offerings. His music then underscores an enveloping
emotional terrain in a bold and uncompromising manner as this
male/female aspect/voice blends together to create a unique
contemporary aesthetic that is both ground breaking in its own
perspective and leaves the listener gasping in wonder that "all the
things that we've forgotten scream for help in our dreams."
Moreover, Clint makes Holly's landscape of human desire his own by leaving her voice largely intact while manipulating phrase
arrangements to heighten emotion. In this way Clint channels "her"
voice into "his". Likewise, Clint intuitively finds the right
phrase/riff/hook that underscores the song's rising/falling pathos
and maximizes Holly Anderson's already achingly vivid voice. Whereas
her poetry often culminates with an image of resonance, Clint
rearranges the more emotionally charged end phrases/images. Thus her
isolated "I" of an original piece entitled "Romance" morphs into
Clint's "I" in "Who Touches You Now?" who "sat in this dusty square
for a long time" pondering the title question. Clint uses both this
initial question and then takes the "Who was always ravenous? Who
was always in need?" from the end part of the piece for a repeated
insistent choral element. Thus to the initial rhetorical urgency he
adds an insistent gradually building musical undertow beneath that
crests in the accusatory tonal shift of this one-two rhetorical
punch and then eddies into the reflective "Maybe we happened and
maybe we didn't at all."
The overall structure of these thirteen songs also pulls the listener into the ongoing dramatic exchanges through both the
arrangement of the tonally varied songs and each individual song's
shifting pitches. The majority of songs involve various levels of
time recollected memory plays (always blissful in those clear eyed
years - "Blissful") that often resonate with differing levels of
dissatisfaction when juxtaposed against a depleted present
time (grief was an unknown then/"Blissful"); and then, SUDDENLY, one
is jolted forcefully from the afterglow of drowning images (in the
weed choked bit of bay - "3 a.m.") into an active fast paced
narrative (Stop, take a sec, look around - "The Kiss"). Such an
alternating structure reveals advanced artistry at work that
deserves further elucidation.
Clint opens this cycle with Holly's "Blissful" in light,
ringing tones that are verbally undercut by the recollection of
physical bliss with "damaged walls, paper flowers, borrowed beds",
and the slower deeper ring that embraces a "chilly, half-empty
room" -- ah, the transitory nature of "Bliss" that fills us still with
a spent wistfulness. This "Blissful" past abuts Clint's present time
frustrated longings in "Call it L---". Holly's reflections give way
to Clint's conversational ponderings which rise into insistent
rhetoric: "what's that mean? what the hell is 'technically'? ...Who
am I when you're alone?". His stressed strumming heightens the
irritated iterations of "Call if love, love, love, love, love" and
thus undercuts the entire construct of the word and all its myriad
connotations.
In the exact middle of this cycle is
"Post-Pathetic", an extensive present tense narrative in which
Clint's voice and rhetorical demands are predominant -- "Say it
happened/Grant me that one favor." On either side of this central
hinge a certain type of symmetry is achieved as the varied songs
spread out in a musical diptych. Clint further enhances this
reflective/active interaction by framing the end of this relational
song cycle with a voice perspective that inverts/interlocks the two
opening songs (H,C,H,C, so to speak). The twelfth song, "What a Body
Can Do", like "Blissful ", recollects moments between co-mingled
bodies- - "chasing your/young bones was/a form of bliss/ravishing them
too." The "way to live in our skins again" of "Blissful" has become
"the lips and hips and arms" that "teach us what a body can do".
Furthermore, Clint's orchestrations of driving momentum build and
build taking over the emotional thrust of the piece only to subside,
build again and end in sonic resonance.
As Holly's penultimate memory play is more narrative in nature, Clint's final narrative"Perfect", almost totally devoid of
his earlier rhetoric and one of the few songs to utilize the more
objective he/she over the first person perspective, is a blending of
evocative images that linger from unrequited longing -- "lemony yellow
caroms/ratty capris ...lovely camisole." They float in a soft sonic
current that builds to a rushing current at this "perfect day's"
(and song cycle's) end -- "and his heart goes sick/with the certainty
of hurt." This sonic swell sweeps "Perfect" and its myriad
connotations into oblivion; except for one perhaps, the idea that
these thirteen songs are very thoroughly accomplished, indeed, quite
perfected.
In every way then "consonant" is a
an artistic triumph. Clint has called forth hauntingly beautiful and kick-ass compositions
articulated through a unique voice perspective. The final notes
evoke the hope that his Muse remain restless and relentless so Clint
will continue to drive us all in the "van screaming fast 90 down 90"
from "That Boston Life" into the future.
1. Blissful (Anderson/Conley)
Clint Conley's consonantal Bliss
2. Call It L--- (Conley)
3. Buckets of Flowers, Porno Mags (Anderson/Conley)
4. Who Touches You Now? (Anderson/Conley)
5. John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" (Anderson/Conley)
6. Not Like Them (Conley)
7. Post-Pathetic (Anderson/Conley)
8. That Boston Life (Anderson/Conley)
9. 3 a.m. (Anderson/Conley)
10. The Kiss (Conley)
11. Details of Attraction (Anderson/Conley)
12. What a Body Could Do (Anderson/Busted Statues/Conley)
13. Perfect (Conley)
OFFICIAL consonant website
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consonant