Jim White: Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See

admin on Jan 23rd 2005

”Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See” gets off to a perfect start: “Static on the Radio” slinks in with a dark, buoyant beginning that draws you in to White’s contemplative whisper. By the chorus, however, Aimee Man’s accompaniment brings the song somewhere decidedly different from that initial waft of the mysterious. Wanting, waiting for it to come back, the listener becomes a curious passenger – something that won’t go unrewarded on this album.

Dark shades are again present on the lumbering, slow, “Bluebird,” an almost elegiac ode to something that seems to have been drawn out and pulled away from the artist, yet completely deserving his attention and respect. Managing to be remarkably soulful at all times, White’s clear voice sings crisply yet hushed, while everything else seems to just hang around it. The funky “Combing My Hair in a Brand New Style” is an unexpected infusion of Southern-style hip-hop; White speaks like an old, soft-spoken guru amidst a background of crooning trumpets and a line of back-up singers, to really give it that Afro-American edge – it recalls the likes of Gil Scot-Heron, but taking the feel of a 70s bohemian soul track and inverting it in tornado-riddled corn fields. Similarly, on “Buzzards of Love,” a soulful, urban feel is once again uprooted and transplanted somewhere else, somewhere lost and disorientated, but where the power and substance retain their worth.

The weary, melancholic country of “That Girl from Brownsville, Texas” makes it clear that Jim White has no intention of accepting the idea of a clear-cut genre to stick to. At one moment in particular, the music stops and White take his time stringing the words together, as if putting off the waiting music just for fun, or to hold the thought and the moment together that little bit longer. While the smoky, banjo-straddling “Borrowed Wings” will etch itself in your memory as simultaneously haunting and beautiful (and feels a touch like what an encounter between the recent works of Grant Lee Phillips and Tom Waits would sound like if the two ever crossed paths), the quirky “If Jesus Drove a Motorhome” can’t help like sounding like an Eels outing. While the distorted background refrain of “Motorhome, motorhome, motorhome” absolutely makes the song, its eclectic mix of elements is rich food for thought. Unexplainably funky, the song is just another example of how White can reconfigure so many other types of music to his own choosing, and produce successful results every time.

In “Objects in Motion,” the image of a suitcase of unsigned love letters floating down a river is a terrifyingly profound reminder of life’s inevitability. This song is weighty enough that one might need to go and have a lie down afterward: stripped from it’s heavy, blue restlessness, it carries a beautiful, insightful sentiment. After country blues are rejigged and remixed on “Alabama Crome,” complete with a breakdown for a hick-rap, sounds fade in and out at the beginning of “Phone Booth in Heaven.” Time is being killed as the song begins, an acoustic contemplation follows the sounds of cars zooming past on a wet road, passing God only knows what in the ditch out of their vision. At times, Jim White’s music is the equivalent of unexplainable, extra-terrestrial phenomena (an abduction from a crop-circle somewhere in the South would be apt, perhaps). An extraordinary album by an equalling intriguing figure in music.


Artist / Group:
Jim White
Album:
Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
Label:
Luaka Bop
Released:
19th April 2004