Recurrent Obsession : 'This Empty Northern Hemisphere' and 'Our Endless Numbered Days'

It has been a while since we have talked music. And even though I'm probably better at solving equations and calculating moves, I think for once, I might be in love - helplessly in love with two musicians of my time who I can't believe even exist to this day. Isakov is still comprehensive to an extent that it is possible to talk about his music, which is wholesome, rustic, pretty, evolved, melancholic and intoxicating. Iron and Wine, is probably each of these coupled with the fact that Sam Ervin Beam's music is enchanting and crazy and like Van Gogh's "Sorrow" - soething you cannot possibly afford to talk about, in details. 

There was this one time when I was fifteen and used to live by the side of the river I had grown up with, and every night would want to make me desperately run away from the world and seek refuge in perceiving its beauty. Beauty that it was, that it imparted into my eyes and the ecstasy inside. It was irresistible, it wanted me to believe I was constituted out of something else - something other than skin and muscles and bones. Something as crazy as Kafka's short stories or the sound of bells or the causality behind the beasts barking every night like the dead exist. Sam's music reminds me of tangentially touching these points, of wombs and ashes spread across galaxies, of musk, of umbilical cords, of a pair of other-worldly eyes. 

(Photograph Source : Genius)

You would know art is art when it defies both grammar and semantics and challenges you to figure out the fault. I'm listening to 'Sodom, South Georgia' for the fourty-sixth time as I write this and I probably will obsess a bit more about Iron and Wine than I will about Isakov simply because I couldn't muster the courage to listen to 'Our Endless Numbered Days' for almost a year. If you ever look deep into the stature and expression of a language, you would know how it stretches far, far beyond the universal set we are constantly trying to define. It fills the gaps and voids between the arts and the sciences. There is one very ecstatic, arousing element about Beam's work - which combines sexuality, origin, urge, instincts so deeply yet so wildly that it almost cuts through the skin. The first time I listened to him was after I had listened to Isakov's cover of 'The Trapeze Swinger' and it depicted absurdist fiction in music. Absurdity in music other than 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' or 'Strawberry Fields Forever' are not very easily identifiable. On top of that, I don't understand why the rave is so harsh about the Beatles because they lack the melancholy, in all circumstances and nothing will ever suffice for that. This is one big reason why Tarkovsky is more renowned than say, Wes Anderson or Tolstoy is legendary. This is also a huge advantage point for Pink Floyd, who at least have elements of resistance, of action of some kind or the urge for the same in their music. 

(Photograph Source : Wikipedia)

Now, being very gentle on the critical side, Justin Bieber or Rihanna or even Beyonce or Adele will not be even remotely close for comparison with any of these artists. Primarily, the genres are distinguished, highly unique, poetic, philosophical - unlike the regular high-slit-on-the-red-dress-worth-4000-dollars technique. Secondarily, we're strictly talking art here, and not how desirable the artist is from the consumer's perspective and finally, most pop-culture icons right now have no idea about songwriting or the basic idea of art one needs to absorb before writing a song. On a positive note, we have discovered some fine treasure here and we certainly can indulge into the same and not be pessimistic about the future of doomsday. There still is hope somewhere, that art will survive. 

Coming back to Beam's music, the drive to trace back the causality behind sexuality and its attributes is visible if you take a closer look. It is Freudian, even - if you haven't sensed that already. It was apparently quite shocking to listen to 'Cinder and Smoke' for the first time. Incidentally, I can also smell the wintery notes in his music and it was practically one winter from now that I got introduced to his music. 'Upward Over the Mountain' is on the contrary, a softer song, something that easily assimilates into the veins. 'Sodom South Georgia' is as beautiful as 'Take Me To Church' and Sam's voice has a very sultry, very sensual element in it - which other than being melancholy is insanely attractive.

Now, I have certain memories attached to Isakov's music ; so I probably will never know if I will have a perception of his work devoid of propensities of the positive kind. One of the first songs I had listened to was 'Universe' and I felt a dagger piercing through the skin, then the rib, then the heart until it reached skin on the other side back again. It was so uniquely put together in such a short span of time that it has got the x-factor that drives the listener half-crazy at first sight. This however, compared to Iron and Wine's work, is more descriptive, less absurd, less insane, softer, more tender
and more enthralled at the inflexion points. Anyone who has ever loved Pablo Neruda or T. S Eliot will empathise with the values of Isakov's music. Fortunately, that number in the world is still comparatively low. Hence, the channelisation of capital and capital only in means and value and understansing hasn't engulfed his work. For Sam's work, though, I do not have the urge to define a closed set of people from any perspective who are going to fall in love with his music. It might be anything it might be anyone on a stormless, starry night, looking on the inside, listening to a massive something brewing out of nothing. The transcendence in both of the artist's work is highly impressive. I end up listening to Isakov on nights or days that I would strictly like to enjoy my own company on, or when on a flight or while reading Irving Stone. 'Big Black Car' or 'Amsterdam' are cozy and warm songs. 'Words' or 'The Stable Song' are soul-haunting.