TANAH - ardent fevers

Welcome everybody holding up the candle of prairie songwriting by deconstructing and reconstructing it, eternally. In these weeks, where discussions about the yes or no of country-ism or importance or greatness of “Garden Ruin” by Calexico won’t cease in the inclined circles (a pure coincidence, I know, if you believe in coincidences, that is… anyway, a threefold yes from my side) it is good to be reminded of a few things again. Like, that there are quite a lot of people still believing in the honesty and reality of a great song distilled by the sun and the wind on the prairie, grasping for the grand scale of the open plane. Or that the acoustic guitar is still the most important instrument in the country-band scheme. That Neil Young was right, Leonard Cohen a true poet and Gram Parsons unfortunately is still dead[1]. That climbing a mountain or sitting at the sea does change your point of view and makes you a better human being. And, I have said that quite often now, that the prairie can be everywhere.

For a young man to really get into the spirit of his hometurf, it can be a good move to go really far away, to be able to see and judge from the distance. For Jesse Poe, songwriter and leader of the collective named Tanakh, the place of choice was Italy; a good place when thinking of the sun and the hills, the people and the food, and finally of bands like Morose or Franklin Delano. “ardent fevers”, the fourth album of Tanakh on Alien8, nevertheless shows no clear european uniquenesses, unless you insist on counting an elaborate air of refinedness and savoir vivre akin to The Tindersticks into the mixture. But then you would have to stand up for the discussion if it is not more like a Sixties psychedelic folk song feeling.

Tanakh is a big ensemble, but Poe makes use of it in a very downbeat and minimal way,stripping the cast to the bare essentials, amongst them some well-known names like Isobel Campbell on cello. Instrumentalists add what they should in time and volume, there are solo-drives and everything is added up according to the song, which results in varied and lush arrangements that support the songs favorably. The basic guitar lines imagined on an acoustic guitar somewhere, on the beach, a lonely hotel room, a flat overlooking a piazza in Florence, wherever, are still to be heard amongst the recordings that way. It is a cinematic piece of songwriter’s epicness, incorporating vast areas of american songwriting as a background to rely on and refer to.

[1] There was a little episode in my life which makes me look rather foolish, but I still insist that not wanting to leave for a long weekend in the country without my CD-copies of „GP“ and „Grievous Angel“ and searching for them for full 15 minutes, was more sensible and logical than having left without them. Shouting „No, I have to find them, NOW!“ might have seemed a little over the top to most people, I admit.


	TANAKH – ardent fevers (CD, Alien8)

	Welcome everybody holding up the candle of prairie songwriting by deconstructing and reconstructing it, eternally. In these weeks, where discussions about the yes or no of country-ism or importance or greatness of “Garden Ruin” by Calexico won’t cease in the inclined circles (a pure coincidence, I know, if you believe in coincidences, that is… anyway, a threefold yes from my side) it is good to be reminded of a few things again. Like, that there are quite a lot of people still believing in the honesty and reality of a great song distilled by the sun and the wind on the prairie, grasping for the grand scale of the open plane. Or that the acoustic guitar is still the most important instrument in the country-band scheme. That Neil Young was right, Leonard Cohen a true poet and Gram Parsons unfortunately is still dead[1]. That climbing a mountain or sitting at the sea does change your point of view and makes you a better human being. And, I have said that quite often now, that the prairie can be everywhere. For a young man to really get into the spirit of his hometurf, it can be a good move to go really far away, to be able to see and judge from the distance. For Jesse Poe, songwriter and leader of the collective named Tanakh, the place of choice was Italy; a good place when thinking of the sun and the hills, the people and the food, and finally of bands like Morose or Franklin Delano. “ardent fevers”, the fourth album of Tanakh on Alien8, nevertheless shows no clear european uniquenesses, unless you insist on counting an elaborate air of refinedness and savoir vivre akin to The Tindersticks into the mixture. But then you would have to stand up for the discussion if it is not more like a Sixties psychedelic folk song feeling. Tanakh is a big ensemble, but Poe makes use of it in a very downbeat and minimal way,stripping the cast to the bare essentials, amongst them some well-known names like Isobel Campbell on cello. Instrumentalists add what they should in time and volume, there are solo-drives and everything is added up according to the song, which results in varied and lush arrangements that support the songs favorably. The basic guitar lines imagined on an acoustic guitar somewhere, on the beach, a lonely hotel room, a flat overlooking a piazza in Florence, wherever, are still to be heard amongst the recordings that way. It is a cinematic piece of songwriter’s epicness, incorporating vast areas of american songwriting as a background to rely on and refer to. Well, late at night, when everything gets a little blurred and people, bars and streets usually look softer and finer than they are in the brutal midday sun, the way to listen to music also changes. No more cooking or household chores to do on the side, no thinking about getting food or what to do. The tranquil state between deciding if to go to bed or to stay awake for another couple of quarter hours, befits “ardent fevers” very well. The drawn out solo of “still trying to find you home” is a hole of timelessness in itself. Some choruses and melody lines will make time go by faster and slower, but leave you unrelated to any lapse late at night, like “winter song”. By the time “take and read”, the final song on “ardent fevers” has gone by you will lean back, breathe slowly and wonder where the time went to. There is never an instant of the fragile boredom of some of the currently fashionable Scandinavian songwriters, because every moment is filled with pristine beauty and emotional depth. Instead of laptop tinkering Poe prefers the truthful and real sounds of lonely violins screeching or the hollow depth of a warm electric guitar humming or the old-fashioned sound of a B3-organ. And this, after all, is what adds the bonus to the superb songwriting. [1] There was a little episode in my life which makes me look rather foolish, but I still insist that not wanting to leave for a long weekend in the country without my CD-copies of „GP“ and „Grievous Angel“ and searching for them for full 15 minutes, was more sensible and logical than having left without them. Shouting „No, I have to find them, NOW!“ might have seemed a little over the top to most people, I admit.
	www.alien8recordings.com
	05/2006