Samuel Seed
worries that it may be the wrong season for both of these records, but I think they'll be able to transcend...Whether these are overtly autumnal, wispy drifters he's cooing out on New Love Ln -it shouldn't affect any of us, really, as we've all slowly grown used to an evermore disorienting shift of unnaturally early or unnaturally augmented seasonal elements. Spring or no Spring...what's Autumn, anymore, anyway?
What's more disorienting, anyway, is that I haven't yet heard Seed's songs until just two days ago.
Where have I been? Or, maybe, where has he been? He's been here, actually, most of the last deacde anyway, composing eclectic baroque-pop ditties that render a remarkable balance between earthy plods through a dusky, alluringly dirgelike minimalism with this restless rousing toward a warmer, brass-leaning balladry.
There are many moments, so far, in listening back New Love Ln, where I just have to stop, often out of sheer curiosity as to where the song might go... In some instances, the instrumental accompaniment (all of it performed by Seed) is catching up, with muted excitement, to the vocal melody. The melodies seem, sometimes, somewhat windblown, a Whitmanesque song-to-nature, flown out like plucked petals as our troubaour treks onward... The voice's capricious wavering, its whispery, Leonard-Cohenesque croon, saunters forward with the chiming pianos, breathy flutes and jangling guitars stepping right behind in its wafting path, never far behind, the two eventually trailing out this somewhat haunting-but- mostly dreamy affectation of a waltz-facilitating marching band who sways dazedly under the big top of a frayed, graying circus tent at the edge of a clammy swamp, flickering with torchlights as the night world comes to life.
I don't care that this song is more than seven minutes long - I think you should listen to it...
Where have I been? Where have you been, for that matter? ...And, anyway, where has he been...Well, he's been out of town (our town, the metro area) for the last year or so, but local music fans might be able to more swiftly acquaint themselves with him by considering comrades with many in Detroit's neo-folk patch - be it the broken-baroque re-imaginings Slow Giant (and by further extension, multi-collaborative Max Daley of the Phantom Cats) or the blue-collar rock n roll poeticisms of Mike Anton (and by extension, the Mantons) or rock-leaning chamber-pop quartet Tone & Nice ...or singer/guitarist Dina Bankole (and by extension, The Secret Twins and Swimsuit).
You know this guy... And he's got quite a disarming, dulcite voice with a keen sensibility for subtly - just like a stylishly slathered saxophone or low, humming trumpet, he lets his voice lilt out in this wonderful way.
But back to Slow Giant, in the middle of the autumn, just last year, they put out a record with Seed (including Daley, Alex Wildner and Bankole) on bandcamp called A Low Life in the Dead Garden - acheiving this strange, spacey, jazz-pop flutter, a dew-dripped traipse for twilight meditators wondering just how long the dark years last...
Listen: Slow Giant - "Dark Years"
Look for a new Seed solo album, sometime this summer.
