When those Tea Party morons closed the U.S. Government and nearly provoked a global economic calamity, they also shut down the National Zoo. Which meant the Panda Man couldn’t greet the visitors. He sure was happy to see us again, and the feeling definitely was mutual. Leica M, Noctilux, ND filter.
Speaking of Jimmy Page… Leica M, 28mm Summicron.
On his masterful new mini-LP, Emancipated Hearts, Dean Wareham plays a cover of the Incredible String Band’s “Air.” We hadn’t thought about the ISB for some years, with the exception of reading producer Joe Boyd’s terrific memoir, White Bicycles, which came out in 2006. We didn’t love the Incredible String Band, but we really loved the solo album, released in 1971, by Mike Heron, Smiling Men With Bad Reputations. Let me tell you just a few things about it, which should send you directly to Amazon, which miraculously dropped a copy of the CD off at our front door after we found our old LP was a mite too scratchy for aural bliss.
ISB was a British folk trio in a Golden Age that produced bands like Fairport Convention. But Mike Heron, like Dylan before him, was at heart a rocker, and when it came time to step out from the Incredible String Band and produce a solo album, he did so with such friends as Steve Winwood, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks and Dave Pegg, Pete Townshend and Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, Elton John, Ronnie Lane, and John Cale. Some lineup, huh? Members of Traffic, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Fairport Convention, the Velvet Underground, and the Faces. The only bands missing were the Beatles and the Stones. The album is amazing.
There are a number of highlights, but for us the big one always was the song “Warm Heart Pastry,” which in the original album cover credited “Tommy and the Bijous” as the backup band. It was, of course, Townshend and Moon, with Ronnie Lane on bass and John Cale on viola, and it is one of the great lost rockers of the era. The whole thing is a long-lost delight — “Beautiful Stranger” sounds like it was left on the cutting room floor when Dear Mr. Fantasy was produced. And on the CD, two bonus tracks are included, which brings “Lady Wonder,” with a raucous Jimmy Page playing slashing slide guitar, to light for the first time.
We love the new Dean Wareham album. We’re especially indebted to him for having given us the added bonus of reminding us about this great lost masterpiece. Go find Mike Heron’s Smiling Men With Bad Reputations.
Great name for an Elephant 6 band. Leica M, 28mm Summicron Asph.
If you really want to read a good history of the Elephant 6 Collective, with insights into the Olivia Tremor Control and the great Apples In Stereo, then head on over to the great Paste.com writeup of Ruston, Louisiana’s finest. Seriously good reading.
The focus of the piece is on Robert Schneider (Apples), Bill Doss (OTC), and Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), but it delves into the many projects each was involved in along the way. And it reminds us of how sad it was, in the summer of 2012, when Bill Doss passed away, just as the reformed Olivia Tremor Control was getting ready to put out a new album.
Which reminds us, where is that Olivia Tremor Control album promised before Bill Doss died? There is a reference here to it being finished. When will we see it?
In the parking lot, small town, USA. Not what we expected. Leica M, 28mm Summicron (cropped.)
Dean Wareham’s Emancipated Hearts was released today. Not quite an E.P., not quite an album, it is — when the B-side to “Love Is Colder Than Death” is added to the tally — six new Wareham compositions and a cover of The Incredible String Band’s “Air.” It is a beautiful, modest collection of songs that make us yearn for more — more Wareham in any form he’s willing to give us: solo artist, in tandem with Britta Phillips, or as a leader of a band.
While “The Deadliest Day Since The Invasion Begins” hauntingly lingers in the mind, the title track, “Emancipated Hearts,” is the stunner here. When you think about Wareham’s sensibility — writing often gorgeous melodies, post-folk sensitive songs as pretty as anything by Robyn Hitchcock — it’s a revelation to realize we’ve never really heard one of his songs with a piano on it, and only rarely with cello or viola. Wareham has always surrounded his melodies with delectable guitar lines, so purely in the mode of Sterling Morrison’s work with the Velvet Underground that, in fact, the ur-Luna breakthrough, “Friendly Advice,” even featured Morrison. Here, though, we have piano and viola as emollients and the resulting raga completes a circle, as “Emancipated Hearts” sounds like it could easily have been a collaboration with the fellow-traveling Velvets acolyte Anton Newcombe on some long lost Brian Jonestown Massacre album, even as it weaves in the tune from “The Little Drummer Boy.”
On Dean and Britta’s 13 Most Beautiful, Wareham recycled Luna’s “The Enabler” as “Herringbone Tweed,” updating a melody for his post-Luna incarnation. Here he builds “The Ticking Of The Bomb” on the chassis of Luna’s “Hello Little One,” and with the expanded instrumentation used here, it takes a pleasing melody into breathtaking sublimity. More of this, sir, please? In fact, the whole mini-album is a tease, like reading a short story in The New Yorker by your favorite author, and while savoring it, it produces that feeling that will only be satisfied by a whole new book.
We love that he chose to play “Air,” a song by the Incredible String Band, and wish only that he could have recorded ISB leader Mike Heron’s “Warm Heart Pastry.” This is an aspect of Wareham’s talent that is under-exploited: reviving sounds of late ’60s British folk rock. Again, let’s have some more of this, Dean, ok?
Last week we wondered if Wareham was hinting at a Luna reunion in his review of the new Mazzy Star album. We don’t really care what form more music from Dean Wareham comes in: a solo album of requisite length, more work with Britta, reunion of Luna. It has been about eight years since Luna broke up, and on 13 Most Beautiful and now on Emancipated Hearts we have a reminder of how Dean Wareham is a talent of the first rank, his heart emancipated, his songwriting reliant on more than just his magical guitar work to fulfill a song. May we have another helping?
UPDATE: The original version of this post stated that this was the first collection ever released by “Dean Wareham.” Our friends at A Headful of Wishes pushed back on this assertion. So it turns out the “Anesthesia” E.P., released in 1992, really was a “Dean Wareham” release. We stand corrected. Because two of the three songs on it were on Luna’s initial release, Lunapark, and because we never saw the 12″ or 7″ vinyl releases, we always assumed this was Luna, and it was a mistake to credit it to Wareham. Live and learn.
All photos Leica Monochrom.
If we had to choose a single favorite urban oasis in the world, we would take Washington’s Dumbarton Oaks. We have photographed it, and written about it, many times.
There is a magic to this estate at the top of Georgetown, especially on a hot day in a city that was built on a swamp.
A walk through its large interior is a wonderful place to collect one’s thoughts, to be away from the call of the bustling city.
It has certain magical features that one wouldn’t ordinarily expect to be able to visit in a public, urban garden.
We know there are great parks in Paris and London — in all cities, surely. But measure for measure, we’ll take Dumbarton Oaks.
Which is why it was such a delightful surprise yesterday to read in the New York Times Magazine that Bill Clinton has added an essay to City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts,
in which he offers his thoughts on a favorite park. Yes, Dumbarton Oaks. The book is out tomorrow.
These guys could be dangerous. If they could stop texting. Leica M, 50mm APO-Summicron-Asph.
It’s Saturday. The Tchaikovsky score is ready. Where are you? Leica M, 50mm Noctilux.
Tulip Frenzy 