Bombadil, Part Two
Bombadil: Tarpits and Canyonlands – Ramseur Records 2729
For many people, I suppose, music is an evolving art, and what suits the taste is what is new and “relevant”. I am not one of those people. I don’t dispute that music evolves. On the contrary, I have made it my profession to know how music has changed over time, and what those slow, incremental changes sound like. But I don’t care what is current or popular. Indeed, my favorite piece of music of all time was first presented in 1721, and my favorite piece of popular music was written over thirty years ago. Music, to me, needn’t be modern. It needn’t even be relevant to my own experience. But sometimes it is both, and those are happy occasions. Bombadil’s new album, Tarpits and Canyonlands, is such a record.
Tarpits and Canyonlands explores one major theme: marriage. It isn’t difficult to imagine how the band arrived at this concept. The members all seem to be around the age when marriage is the thing to do. At their Gainesville show this spring, there was a handwritten note on the electric piano which read, “Just Married”. I am no longer a newlywed, which makes this album especially relevant, since one question prominently asked is, “What lies beyond the honeymoon?”
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That clip is from later in the song, but in it you hear Bombadil employ a classic musical device, by bringing back the main musical motif of the song, heard here in the first verse:
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And what lies far, far beyond the honeymoon, after decades of being married to the same person? “What would you say of marriage after…I hurt your dream job offer because I was scared?” What if “I broke your confidence with a lover that was in my past?” What if “the nursery rhyme stork never brought a baby to you?” This is marriage:
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The messages in the lyrics are often serious, and even downright melancholy, when the music itself beguiles you into feeling more cheerful. An up-tempo number with hand-clapping and a catchy piano riff reminds you of your “Sad Birthday”:
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And even when you get a message from home, “they forgot to say ‘happy birthday’”.
The album’s most powerful lyric comes from a song called “So Many Ways to Die”. I am wont to avoid a song with such a sinister title, but a more apt name might have been “So Many Ways to Stay Alive”, since the tune asks us to examine the way we look at our own bleak circumstances and find something positive. “So many ways to think how differently we interpret the brink between the side of life worth living and the point at which you’re better off to sink”:
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I hope you’ll forgive that I made a small edit in the clip above, because I wanted you to hear the second chorus, where the singer rises an octave from where he sang the first chorus. I really appreciate the extra energy, and the strain in the voice seems honest and appropriate to me. It’s my favorite moment in the whole album.
I don’t mean to suggest that Tarpits and Canyonlands is all unhappy, all the time. “Oto the Bear”, and “Kuala Lumpur”, both of which they played at their Gainesville show, are jaunty and fun to sing along with. “Laurita” is a Spanish-language song with a catchy tune and an adorable arrangement, complete with a change in rhythm – a frequent musical device on this album.
Tarpits and Canyonlands describes marriage as a pyramid. That may not be instructive, and, indeed, it leaves more questions than answers. But so do the Pyramids, and, sometimes, so does marriage. And, though I don’t expect any album to last 4,000 years, I do anticipate that this record will remain a rich and rewarding document well beyond the honeymoon.
Filed under: Popular Music, WAYLTL on July 8th, 2009 | No Comments »