JONATHAN WILSON Rare Birds BELLA UNION 7/10
LA producer’s magnum opus; Josh Tillman, Lana Del Rey and Laraaji guest. By Sharon O’Connell
Even, maybe especially, for an esteemed multiinstrumentalist or producer, the shadow of their professional associations must pose a significant problem: how to make a mark as an autonomous auteur if you’re largely defined by the work you’ve done for others? In Jonathan Wilson’s case, the answer seems to be, pretty easily.
The north Carolina exile’s Cv reads like a steady leapfrogging from small-print guitar acknowledgements on records by now-defunct Australian rock bands, to recording with everyone from Karen elson to Roger Waters (whose Us + Them tour he joined last May, as guitarist) and racking up high-profile production credits – notably, on all three Father John Misty albums. Wilson’s history also includes teaching himself to make collectable guitars and, more significantly, moving to Laurel Canyon in 2005, having (so he’s claimed) been smitten by its sound aged 10. There he set up his first home studio and held weekly jam sessions attended by locals like Jenny Lewis and Jakob Dylan. now, he’s adding his third solo album to that narrative arc.
But Wilson’s is more than an eminently tell-able story with LA scenester cachet. These alliances are the stuffing of his new record to a degree that many artists would baulk at, because it would shine too harsh a light on their history – risky, if self-mythology is their game. Wilson is happy to show his workings, because the intent with his new album isn’t to erase or obscure any of his previous experiences, it’s the opposite – to acknowledge and celebrate what got him here.
Although all of Wilson’s records have been long, this surely explains Rare Birds’ heft (13 tracks, almost 79 minutes), density and ambitiously maximalist style: you need a lot of record if you’re “quoting from earlier versions of [yourself ]” and building on a tale that began with your first four-track, when you were 13. This storifying means that despite exploring ’60s psychedelic rock and pop (Pink Floyd and The Beatles, principally), employing synths and drum machines to appropriate ’80s english art-pop production (Peter Gabriel, Talk Talk) and more besides, Wilson hasn’t totally forsaken the retro, West Coast country-folk/rock sound that defined his first two albums. The ghosts of Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty stalk “Living With Myself”, while there’s a whiff of Gram Parsons on the title track and of James Taylor on “Hi Ho The Righteous”, a cartoon-country oddity that features the (simulated) sounds of farm animals.
But if there’s a unifying aesthetic on this LP – which is a set of reflections on a failed relationship and the author’s place in the universe – it’s the brooding, widescreen facet of Pink Floyd as defined by Roger Waters. Inevitable, perhaps, given that Wilson spent months in the studio with him when he was also recording Rare
Birds. Wilson’s admiration is made explicit
right at the start, on “Trafalgar Square”, whose melancholic, interstellar sweep is pure Floyd, although it’s underpinned by a honky-tonk/blues swing. It’s there too on the bittersweet “49 Hairflips” – which also echoes Lennon’s “Mind Games” and adds a desperate intensity via explicit lyrics – and throughout, in terms of effects, field recordings, samples and other earswivelling puncta.
eccentricity is one of two crucial counters to the album’s familiarity, throwing a couple of tracks that would otherwise register pretty high on the AOR
scale slightly off their axis: the sound of underwater bubbles pop up unannounced on the Bruce Hornsby-ish “Over The Midnight”, while some of Roy Orbison’s spangled doom rescues “There’s A Light” from soft-rock stasis. The other factor is the record’s heady emotional rush, which is amped up by its detailed orchestral layering and the warmly melancholic tone of Wilson’s voice.
The songs are autobiographical, but not always straightforwardly so. They range from memories of wild, random encounters and loved-up car rides, soaked in the lore of LA’s geography – Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, Topanga Creek – to the existentially gnomic. “Why would we be where we were?/Where will I be when I am?” wonders Wilson on “Me”, while on “Living With Myself” he’s beset by doubt and “living with the fear of God
every single day”. Scepticism and a little scathing observation may figure, but ironic witnessing does not. He may be a hipster by association, but at heart Wilson is 100 per cent hippy.
If Rare Birds’ cosmically inclined lyricism only suggests as much, then a guest spot from Laraaji, who chants and plays zither on the beatific “Loving You”, underlines it. But this summary of his guileless intent makes it explicit: “Under no circumstance would I premeditate a sound, or consciously move away from myself or my older material,” Wilson told
Uncut. “I waited patiently for genuine inspiration on each song you hear. This record I made only with one purpose – to distil what I love about music, songwriting, dancing, sharing, living and loving into one work.”
“I waited patiently for inspiration” JONAThAN WILSON