Local Music
Living in the facts of the Midwest can be an uneasy, unsatisfactory reality for those who require regenerative stimuli. Without the confines of an ocean nearby to remind us that, yes, there are boundaries besides death, one is faced with the deadening madness of eternal recurrence - another Spring, another Summer - of time passing over us while you stay still. The weather may change by the hour, the jokes go, but underneath things just remain the same. In the Midwest we live close enough together to see that things aren't as bad as they could be, but not close enough to rev the engines that drive a collective human imagination and cultural potential. Ann Arbor, an oasis to be sure, is still just a tease.
To the extent that l've seen small town Michigan life, there are three primary coping mechanisms to this condition in the form of lifestyle decisions: a family-values church commitment that renders the banality of routinized life moot in lieu of the here after; a corporate careerism which fashions a guiding narrative out of the anticipation of what one can afford next; and drugs, which guarantee on a daily basis that sensation exists (thank god). Denied a geographic context to give us meaning and a population center to give us inspiration, all we are left with is time. And the need to kill it.
Such was my thinking by my fourth spin of the new Flashpaper LP, Pain Taped Over (Forever) on the Westside Audio Lab label. On first listen you have to deal with the fact that this is by no means a perfect recording - these are improvisations without necessary destinations, not pop tunes in any sense of the concept, and the performances are not strong in a pro-jazz kind of way, new school or old. So set aside the notions that records need to be demonstrations of meticulousness or virtuosity if not punk or a purists' folk to be worthy of asserting an aesthetically significant statement on the state of Michigan USA. Imagine this is it, this is perfection.
Flashpapr is the sound of something barely alive, but whether it is dying or coming to life, I suppose, will just have to be up to you. Composed of nothing more that a doublebass (Zach Wallace), violin (Jacob Danzinger) guitar with voice (Westside proprietor and good citizen Fred Thomas) and occasional drumming by the late Geoff Streadwick, Flashpapr's music weaves between yearning Appalachian melodies and new-thing style outsidedness with a shoegazer's sense of humility. It's quiet music, full of space, soothing like a rusty gate blowing open and shut through a summer night, keeping you awake, putting you to sleep.
On the face of it, there's been something of a movement afoot for some time now, this returning to American roots music, bands bom trying to sound like the Carter family, bands trying to live on the road, playing the country chords, drinking whisky, soon to be snorting cocaine. But Flashpapr is not a very self-conscious band in a professional sense, and they are not really part of that, besides, promoters are not essarily rushing to book them because what they do does not really fit nto the club culture anyway. Their music is not about the context of an event, so for them a record, or radio if given the opportunity, sa more optimal medium for their music. Pain Taped Over is the sound of three or four people having a time together playing instruments instead of talking or watching TV, sound at the speed of everyday life, not a weekend ritual or public gathering, let alone a party. And here is how you see that this is the music of a way of life, as another reaction to the Big Empty.
But there is an interesting contrast to be made concerning alt. country or modem folk music, with their ideologies of traditional values and social conservatism, and who find definition (and redemption) in formalized, expected, faithful structures, familiar and familial melodies and machine-tight harmonies. Flashpapr signifies a sense of cultural doubt. Whereas they seem to be doing OK (they're not neurotic nor morbidly depressive), things around them keep disintegrating: a bass line holds steady as a chord progression falls apart, a long-droning ambient violin suddenly swoops into melody. And all in that goddam Midwestern accent: steady, a bit slow, but deliberate, clumsily articĂșlate, not meaning to offend but politely pointing out that while not everything lasts, ghosts are for real. If you are of the same mind you may find this album to be quite pretty and hopeful, otherwise you may think these kids just got funny ideas about what sounds good.
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That sense of maintaining grace in the face of a languid world is not a surprising sentiment coming from Fred Thomas who busts ass and pours hard earned personal money into West side Audio Lab, about the only voice for those with the needs but not the means in Ann Arbor Ypsi. If the so-called "Ann Arbor music scene" had even a marginal work ethic in ratio to its mythic existence there would be at least a half dozen guys like Fred putting out product, and he could be buying groceries with his paychecks instead of 7" sleeves, but that's another column. Don't call them Lo-Fi fetishists, just ask for them by name, they're on: Westside Audio Laboratories P.O. Box 970021 Ypsilanti, Ml 48197.