In 2014 Motorpsycho celebrated their 25 years as a band. And what a long strange trip it's been – I can say that, see, cause part of the band's folklore is that singer/bassist Bent Saether only ever cancelled one MP show and that was to go see a Grateful Dead show. And one way to see the band (there are many ways) is as a very much heavier version of psychedelicized Dead. Would you share a couple of moments (you need a couple, these guys are at their best when they play long) with me in appreciating one of the finest, most adventurous bands of my lifetime? Let's just pick some random moments on their journey that I happen to want to hear as I'm writing.
So the wheel has turned again
and we're left here at the end
of something that was bigger than us all
Could be anything, could be a great rock show! Could be a passing.
Anyway, there's a loss, people are spinning apart with only memories left, there's an empty place at the table. There's a void.
It's never just an end
but it's not easy to transcend
an entire lifetime and its weight
These are some beautiful lyrics.
The music is acoustic, with light electric lead, sung straightforwardly, a ballad. And as you expect, at 2'19” the drums fall in. A fitting kinda marching band like rhythm.
But now, but now! At 2'56” the singing stops, a multi part instrumental section breaks out – drums, bass, mellotron, solo guitar. Like the sun bursting out of the clouds, melodies, groove, rock. It's completely unexpected how it twists and turns. It's full of life, of drama, it sweeps you away.
When they start singing again at 4'43”, it's with renewed force. They're singing in harmonies, they're singing about us, about what we learned, 'be with us if you can' (Townshend-esque, right?), about the future.
Now here's my question, the whole reason I played this. I know my answer and I'm unable to consider anyone feeling different. That part (2'56”-4'43”) and the way it fits into this beautiful song, but that part, as you play it very loud, and you stop whatever else you're doing. Are you really telling me that a tiny part of your life wasn't changed, that you weren't swept up, you didn't feel all that emotion that could never be expressed well up inside your chest, you felt it around your heart, tightening, you felt in the grip of this thing and it made you feel alive? Like yes, my life too can change! You are changed. Are you with me?
***
I'll get back to this, but first a 3 and a half minute detour. Motorpsycho is a quintessential rock trio – you know as well as I do the shamanic power of the trio in rock music (we are talking ROCK music here). They have had many guests, fellow travellers, studio auxiliaries and so on, but they are three: Bent Saether on bass, vocals and main driving force, Hans Magnus Ryan (Snah for short – if these aren't ROCK names, then I don't know what are) guitar god, also vocals, and during the first 15 years Hakon Gebhardt on drums, also glockenspiel, banjo and backing vocals. In 2004 the magic of the trio was broken, when Geb bowed out. That's it, mortally wounded. Could Led Zep continue without Bonzo, the Who without Moon? They were aching, hurting, ready to pack it all in and disappear into the Nordic tundra. But these guys are tenacious. If just the two of us are left, so be it! They locked themselves into a Dutch studio appropriately called The Void, Bent doubling on drums and they fought through that tunnel, all the while laying down a fiercely combative double album (which in itself isn't exceptional, they have more double albums than single) Black Hole / Blank Canvas which burned up their grief as energy. A year later they found their new drummer Kenneth Kapstad -a Slayer and Miles Davis in the '70s specialist – who's restored the magic threesome. But even in those dark days they could pull out an irresistible rock nugget like 'The ace', which as far as I'm aware they laid down on the record and promptly forgot about. Lyrically it's rudderless, as were the times, 'one grain of doubt will destroy it', sings Ryan in a doubtful voice. But he's got his 'head held high', they're still moving in on their target.
***
OK, back to my main story, what is it, that transformative force I feel? Maybe you feel it too, maybe not, but what is it? Part of it is the balance between the overwhelming force, the heavy power and the tenderness. It's a balance which has always been there. Even at the start. You may not have noticed from the previous songs but Motorpsycho came out of a specific punk/metal Norwergian squatters movement. Nose rings, piercings, mohawks, dreadlocks, dropping out of society in favour of dank, decaying shitholes, the promise of a new anarchic society. Looking back at footage from the early days, they don't look healthy. They learned to play to Kiss albums (and have repeatedly covered them in tribute – they've covered lots of artists in tribute). So the power, the anger, the alienation in an early metal highlight like 'Feedtime' shouldn't come as a surprise.
But what's surprising is that at the same time they were talking about Nick Drake and playing acoustic folk songs with violin and mandolin. The reverie of 'Blueberry daydream' is roughly contemporaneous to 'Feedtime' (this version at least, the song was first recorded for their very first demo tape in 1990). Can you even picture this as the same band? Picture them in concerts where they switch easily between the two? In the big picture of their records it all sounds fundamentally linked. It all sounds distinctly Motorpsycho. The acoustic guitarsound glows, there's a ringing in the chords, like there are some 12-strings hidden underneath. The harmonies are ghostly, hovering like a spectre over the backing track. Occasionally you can hear the mandolin rise up above the guitars. It sounds like its title.
***
Let's jump ahead half a decade, to 1998 when the band reached one of their creative peaks with the Beefheart-titled double album Trust Us. Confidence pours from the title and the grooves within. I want to talk you through the first two songs on it. The first track, 'Psychonaut', near as definite statement of their crede, and the term for Motorpsycho-fans henceforth. It's also a great example of the next item on my list of attributes: force, tenderness. This next one I like to call, riding the tiger (after a later song based on an early 2000s riff called 'Tristano' of which they recorded an epic 20 minute version on 2003 Motorpsycho + jazzband Jaga Jazzist EP In The Fishtank – confusing, right?).
It involves zoning in on a drone or a riff and letting it repeat. Then repeat. Then repeat it some more. Meanwhile the intensity builds and builds fraction by fraction. It's a physical feeling, you need to combine it with great volume. It tugs at your gut, you start leaning in, sucked in the vortex. Or, you know, if you're not into it, it's a band playing the same thing for a very long time. Of course the impact is strongest in a live situation. But on Trust Us they got pretty damn close.
Phew, now you might say that's a cool trick, but how did they do that live? They segued into 'Within you without you' of course. Btw, the attendant tour must've been one of the wildest ever (musically). You can hear it on the live album Roadworks Vol 1: Heavy Metall Iz A Poze, Hardt Rock Iz A Laifschteil. 6 songs, 80 minutes. It contains the greatet single example of riding the tiger in history. I might play it later.
***
Imagine the psychonauts' surprise then, when after Trust Us and the wild, psychedelic tours following, 18 months later Motorpsycho greeted us with this:
It doesn't mean they couldn't rock out anymore. A little more melodic, more stylised, less improvisatory. Just as good though certainly. Take 'Glow', the final track on the Barracuda mini album from that same year. Hooks to the fore, this careers onwards for 7 blissfull minutes and pulls out every trick in the book along the way; full stops, echoing piano chords, band-falling-down-the -stairs noise, gear shifts, bass extemporizations, a second (!) coda and so on.
***
Just when it seemed their new found accessability could pay dividends – on the European continent at least – they took another turn into some weird heavy harmony pop / plastic jazz direction, then quickly fragmented (the aforementioned departure of their drummer). When they came back reborn a couple years later they set out on a more progressive/heavy path, like an unholy mixture of Deep Purple, Sabbath and Yes. And that way lay their rock opera. I'm playing one from their first album as the new trio Little Lucid Moments. Maybe it's not the best choice – over the years all of its four songs have been my favorite, roughly in the order they appear on the album. This is the final track, so it's taken me a while. The songs takes its time too – it's only at 1'45” that the intro rises out of the background. But for once it's richly deserved. 'The alchemyst' – once again about transformation, about transceding your previous self. Among its many features I love is a guitar solo that sounds like a real life electrical storm.
***
In fact scrape everything that came before. Everything I wrote. It's all about transcendence. They really went for it, they're still reaching for it. They hit it more often than most anyone. I'm ending with two landmark tracks.
'The wheel'
'K9 suite'
Sail on!
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten