Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Gastr Del Sol
Camoufleur
(Domino, 1998)
Post-rock’s apotheosis. Squirrel Bait alumni involved (natch)
Perhaps my favourite moment of the whole post-rock caper – just nudging aside Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die and Don Caballero’s American Don – I was recently urged to disinter Camoufleur by Field Music/School Of Language’s David Brewis, who was spot on in his analysis of its peerless charms. “Of that whole Chicago school,” he reflected, “It‘s the one record that makes me cry.”
Well said, that man. For while Gastr Del Sol were “Chicago School” incarnate (“members” Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs are assisted here by a sort of post-rock seminary including Tortoise head John McEntire) and revelled in blurring the boundaries between avant-jazz and conservatoire minimalism, this was their first fully-realised stab at something beautifully, recognisably pop. Although, after 1995’s The Harp Factory On Lake Street (a piece for chamber orchestra, plus piano and voice) and an imagined film score – Upgrade & Afterlife – that featured “sound artist” and Velvets/Faust collaborator Tony Conrad – perhaps that’s a relative term.
Winningly, Camoufleur mixes early Eno with Pet Sounds and unexpected instrumentation (Defunkt-style flugelhorn flurries and steel band on The Seasons Reverse) to weave an autumnal ambience. Black Horse begins like picaresque incidental music for a Jacques Tati film and ends as a Philip Glass acoustic guitar étude. Mouth Canyon is The Blue Nile via American Music Club – a tear-jerking combo enhanced by Grubbs’s naive, whispered vocal; “Sensuous detail meet sensuous detail,” he sighs – not a bad description of Gastr Del Sol at all.
Yet, criminally, Camoufleur was their last record together. Grubbs’ subsequent solo albums have included the gorgeous Rickets & Scurvy (2002) whilst O’Rourke went on to record a brace of landmark solo records (Eureka in ’99, Insignificance in ’01) before collaborating with Wilco and Sonic Youth, arguably revolutionising the sound of the former, and consulting (here comes the curveball) on School Of Rock. But if they’ve made nothing quite so stunning as Camoufleur – full of beauty and, simultaneously, the crushing realisation of beauty’s transience – that’s no slight. Hardly anyone has.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 30/07/2008
Further Listening
David Grubbs – Rickets & Scurvy (Fat Cat, 2002)
Jim O’Rourke – Eureka (Domino, 1999)
Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (Domino, 2007)
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