Americana Music Reviews

The Be Good Tanyas
Blue Horse
Nettwerk

by David Pilot

Those among us who crave "traditional" music in all its raw variations and stripped down beauty either already know about the Be Good Tanyas or will forthwith. Those who have a particular sound scheme for "traditional" looping in their subcranial jukeboxes beware. The Tanyas are all over the sonic map like Piet Mondrian with a canvas and some crack. The core elements remain the same throughout Blue Horse: mandolin, banjo, guitar, violin, fiddle. Like Mondrian's paintings, all the songs have bright colors intersecting at right angles. The elements converge throughout Blue Horse in combinations maddeningly disparate, taking continuity's ancient concepts and shredding them in a quest for new ways to mesh the sounds in ways that startle, comfort, disquiet, and amuse. Frankly, Piet would be proud.

At first listen, this was not an easy disc to finish. The Vancouver trio seemed bent on flailing against everything I find satisfying in music, and the spare (occasionally sharp) female vocals fluttered by bereft of warmth. At second listen, the softly bubbling percussion tracks and acoustic arrangements gained substance and life as a cushiony background for said vocals. By third listen, lyrics and vocals found warmth and the album as an overall painting took on a beauty I'd missed entirely on the first run-through. Perhaps a musical version of that girl just pretty enough to be ignored by random passers-by, Blue Horse presented itself as a treasure hiding in plain sight that required some real attention.

It was on one fine March morning
When I bid New Orleans adieu
And I was on the road to Jackson town
My fortunes to renew
I cursed my foreign money
No credit could I gain
Which filled my heart with longing for
The lakes of Pontchartrain

The Be Good Tanyas are Samantha Parton, Frazey Ford and Trish Klein. They found each other in 1999 and discovered a common love for the old songs and musical styles of the frontier; the sort of music trappers and explorers in the frozen North Woods made when Canada was an unknown place full of promise, the sort of music that shares its honesty with the music of the American West, but avoids the saloon's raucous bawdiness. The sort of music one plays on a corn jug and pine box fiddle on a front porch that no neighbors exist to see. Their take on the high lonesome sound is stunning in the simplicity of its approach. Somehow the word "lush" fits when aimed at the arrangements, but if you figure out how, go on and drop me a line. Things this spare and easy are supposed to remind one of granddaddy's old rocking chair or Mamaw's spinning wheel. They evoke comfort as a function of a sense of home, but they are traditionally devoid of the overstuffed pillows and triple weave carpet in a lush suburban manor. Somehow that's not the case here. The BGTs showcase a fully developed sense of the ethereal, and merge lyrics, instrumentation and vocals in a fashion befitting both rocking chairs and La-Z-Boys. And that, frankly, is a metaphor so confusing that it fits.

The Tanyas and Nettwerk (also home to artists as diverse as MC 900 Ft. Jesus and Sarah McLachlan) put together a cast of stellar musicians as accompaniment to Blue Horse's captivating tunes. The ladies and someone named Futcher produced the disc, reworking its original indie release basics into an outstanding example of what restrained and knowledgeable production can do. Each note sounds pristine and clear, and not a beat is out of place. There's nothing slick about this, no veneer to disguise shortcomings, and that's a great thing, because musically there ARE no shortcomings on this album. On one level many of the thematic elements eventually begin to run together from track to track, but as backdrop for the vastly different vocal styles on display, they work in a manner not heard in recent memory. Long-term memory, either, for that matter.

Blue Horse is a largely original album, as any debut album should be. But listen close for the creaking of wagon wheels and coffee tins clinking in crisp morning air when the Tanyas do break down a cover tune. Here, it's track number eleven, and it's chock full of clear mountain air and morning's first light breaking across Appalachian or Rocky Mountain vistas. "Oh Susannah," one of the earliest songs I can recall from childhood's innocence, is rendered here with a poignance and beauty my six-year-old soul understood but couldn't have possibly applied. Public domain being the touchy creature it is, believe me when I tell you the Be Good Tanyas play and sing and emote this song as it had to have sounded around countless campfires a century and more ago.

Those who enjoy folk music will take a ferocious liking to this disc instantly. The same applies for proponents of the high, lost, lonesome sound Vince Gill only claims to hear. Those who prefer their guitars amped and music rowdy will find the Be Good Tanyas an acquired taste, a Cuban cigar in a world full of Marlboro Reds. Much like the cigar, Blue Horse may not be the CD of choice for many on most of a workweek's days. But when it's right, just right, you'll find yourself quietly amused and comforted to have this disc in your collection.

Info on the band, tour dates and album sales is available at www.begoodtanyas.com. And all the MC 900 Ft. Jesus fans can make a beeline for www.nettwerk.com right now. If you're in the mood to stretch your musical wings a bit, if you want to hear the closest thing to something you've never heard before (electronica fans get lost, I'm referring here to something you've never heard before but might actually WANT to hear someday), then Blue Horse is a great place to start.

Contact David Pilot at:

tailgunner-at-rockzilla.net

 
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