It's been nearly a year since I wrote about Nat Lyon and his first album, LCRV
http://swiftysteve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/nat-lyon.html
Listening to his music heralds an inner articulation. Unformed and half assembled thoughts seem to be granted words. It's not that I can't think for myself, but it's as if an interior spatial void is carefully formed into which ladders of sound and then syllable are placed and constructed. I find myself climbing and arriving at a point slightly more enlightened than from where I'd started - a bit like deep meditation - more connected with my true qualities, less burdened by acquired falsities. His music is a decent template for how to live a life - honest, unflinching, fearless, compassionate. That I can use his music so is his gift and my privilege.
And musically he's very smart indeed and this latest album takes him further on his obsessive journey of introspection, immersed in his inner and outer environment. It's an album that demands to be listened to in sequence and in its entirety. LCRV was a compelling collection of songs challengingly presented in awkward arrangements, daring the listener to give it more time. New England paradigm shift still makes a feature of Lyon's mood swings but this time there's a gloss coat of studio sheen to buff up the more holistic vision of what he wants to say. This is a proper album, so ordered that the listener ends almost where they began - on an interstate hell - but, like Lyon, in a fitter mental state having made the journey.
It is deeply rooted in the New England environment, inspired by daily observations as Lyon goes about his business. His trick is to combine his internal and external worlds, a deep thinker who keeps his eyes open and focused on where he wants to be (usually at sea), yet still able to communicate his disorientation with a minor chord here, a profanity there. Despite this, gratitude bubbles close to the surface and a slow swell of a major key melody or crunchy guitar chord will sometimes overwhelm the doubt, only to recede again.
Track by track
1. For People In Cars On I-95
"Don't want to die on 95..." - quite a statement to kick off the album (repeated). The thing is he has no intention of doing so but the whispered vocals set the sinister tone, and a surge of drum brushes slowly gives way to a Psycho style synth as it fades out. If your only thought at the end of this track is 'what the fuck...?' that's fine, just hang on in there.
2. Gin And Visions
To a vague Teardrop Explodes' vocal backing ('Passionate Friend'). Lyon takes us on one of his many weird journeys. The buzz saw guitar that overpowers any hint of melody betrays his love of English punk and I think the Buzzcocks would make a stunning version of this, should they ever get to hear it.
3. Boat Wright's Daughter.
This sounds like a conversation with a family member acted out in a dream. It's a tender vocal and I'm reminded not for the first time of Wayne Coyne's voice, but without the attendant ego.
4. Field Notes From Eastern Uplands
One of the more 'produced' tracks, the jagged guitar and circular drum pattern eventually succumb to an ethereal passage of near silence. The song develops the ever present theme of pioneering - travelling without destination - as if Lyon's Mason/Dixon instinct is colliding with a deep yearning for security and familiarity.
5. Pitched
Time to feel sea sick, the acoustic guitar stabilises the vocals and other instruments which pitch back and forth, drums that detonate like distant thunder - "a panic attack made me jump from the ship, and I swam away". He's doing a geographical and as always in such cases the running away is from himself and towards - not away from - his demons.
6. Fox Sighting (1)
Lyon's cynicism is endearing (no really). Who knows if this is a real fox (it doesn't matter). He's taking comfort from his art, and who can blame him.
7. Spoke
Car crashes, adventuring, the sea...the sea. This is one of the most satisfying tracks, a beautiful Bunnymen coming together of guitars that ballast the lyrical fragility in which the author seeks out familiar things, as the world spins out of control around him.
8. Nav Chart
"Someday I'll be the sand between your toes" - more an admission of respect than a threat, this track gets to the heart of Lyon's pre-occupations. It's the most conventional arrangement of the album - a ballad, even. The outward quest as metaphor for inner journey may be imagined, but which is the most real....the answer itself is in the seeking.
9. Coefficients
Emperor X's understated production imbues this with a Grandaddy feeling of power and portent. It may be another search for identity - Lyon's reliance on broken instruments is world weary but heartening - "me and you" (to fade) might be another human being or just the Brunton compass with a broken mirror.
10. Fox Sighting (2)
A re-working of track 6, with a ghostly backing of nocturnal noise and guitar echo, like an inner conversation or prayer. Lyon seems to be tackling life's grey areas by speaking to the fox in his head.
11. Ex Anthro
With a Mark Linkous depth of sincerity, this character study may or may not be autobiographical. It's laced with darkness and curious images (over-granulated snow). The sparseness indulges the electric guitar and the feeling, at the end, is that the retired anthropologist may have just gone and topped himself.
12.Paradigm Shift
Full circle ,we're lulled by a sensitive guitar figure and he seems happy in his Monday morning routine. A day in the life of Nat Lyon, though, and things aren't so simple. I-95 beckons but I get the feeling that by Tuesday he's let go of Monday's wrinkles - maybe that's the paradigm shift. The noise that consumes the song towards the climax of the album is either in his head or a bona fide train wreck - an ambiguous and very human ending to a very human record.
http://natlyon.bandcamp.com/
