Portland, Oregon-based Rachel Taylor Brown, who describes her music as “pith-rock,” has decided to release – via her : page at http://racheltaylorbrown.bandcamp.com – a holiday album entitled 7 Small Winter Songs and a collection of unreleased, stripped down recordings entitled Songs Without A Home.
Her decision to put these online (7 Small Winter Songs has only previously been available at her shows) was made in part to give fans more material and a look into her creative process. But, also to further promote her latest full-length, World So Sweet, which came out earlier this fall.
Of 7 Small Winter Songs she said:
“I wrote these songs in one day, and recorded them in three, in the middle of recording Half Hours with the Lower Creatures. It started out as a kind of joke and challenge I made to a friend, who declined to participate. I suggested we each try to write ten holiday songs in a single day. I decided to plow forward and did write ten songs in all, but wound up recording just these seven. I had to re-learn the songs just to record them and, later, to play them live. It’s a strange feeling to write things os fast you forget them an hour later. I’ve grown to really love these little songs that started on a whim. I like the little bit of melancholy in them, but also the memories of snow, warmth, cold, and all the stuff of the holidays.”
Of Songs Without A Home she says:
“These are some old songs that my engineer and producer, Jeff Stuart Saltzman, suggested I get down during a little break in recording World So Sweet. We just set up a chair and a mic in his living room and ran straight through the songs. My poor fingers – I hadn’t played a guitar in a very long while, and it shows. I have no idea what to do with these songs, or their brethren (who are legion). Thanks for listening!”
For anyone that enjoys these two albums, you will really appreciate her fully realized and conceptualized album World So Sweet, which she refers to as “pith-rock.” But how did she come up with the term “pith-rock?”
“I can never come up with anything pithy when someone asks me that. I hate when people ask me that,” grumbles Portland, Oregon-based Rachel Taylor Brown, responding to her publicist’s question, “how would you describe your music?” for a new bio for her forthcoming full-length, World So Sweet, her seventh studio release.
As a joke she suggests, “Pith Rock; sharp ‘n’ pointy! Or spongy and permeable!” She starts to laugh. “Pith ‘n’ Vinegar Rock! No, wait: there’s that horrible thing they do to frogs in a lab, that’s pithing. Maybe Igneous Rock is better.”
Talk to those who know her music, though, and other descriptions come up. “Unsettling but addictive.” “Good stories.” “Unpredictable.” “Arresting.” “Dark, funny, sweeping, panoramic, pretty, ugly, complex, moving.” And, “You can dance to it.”
But to fully grasp and understand World So Sweet and Rachel Taylor Brown, you have only to listen to the record.
“I realized in retrospect how dark these songs may come off. I wish I could explain better how they make me feel hopeful,” explains Taylor Brown. “I always feel better when dark things are out in the open instead of hidden away. Looking at the scary stuff makes me more appreciative of the beauty in the world, makes me feel like my feet are on the ground.” She continues, “I think it helps that you can dance around to many of them. I can see someone getting down to one of these songs and never knowing what the hell I’m singing about. I like that the songs can be enjoyed on that level–it makes me feel sneaky. Lyrics are very important to me but I know a lot of people don’t listen to them, especially now. It’s interesting to see who notices the words and who doesn’t.”
It’s that love of life, humor, curiosity, basic compassion, and a healthy dose of skepticism that fuels Taylor Brown. It’s heavily reflected in everything she does, including the thirteen tracks found on World So Sweet.
“I love the people I love, and the beautiful world,” she continues. “I’m fortunate. There was a time I didn’t want to be around. Now that I do, it’s sweet, every day; even when it’s horrible. There are birds. The world is sweet, even though it’s awful. That prayer I had to say when I was a kid: ‘Thank you for the World So Sweet, thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the birds that sing, thank you, God, for everything.’ I’ve always loved that prayer, even though I don’t believe in the God part anymore. I love anything that reflects even some little awareness that we’re living with a whole lot of other creatures and that we’re just one bit of the whole thing.”
Rachel Taylor Brown might best be described as a dubious but hopeful observer who watches the world and the people of the world destroy and create beauty daily, just one witness who can tell a story through song.
“These songs are about the usual mundane things that seem to preoccupy me; how great and how awful people are and how beautiful and ugly the world is,” she says. “There’s huge scope in that. I know I have a comfort level with some of the things I write about that others may not have, due in large part to my own history. I’m not thinking of how it may hit anyone else when I’m writing. I’m usually surprised when my husband or some other listener points out that it’s maybe hard to hear. I really believe in letting a song be what it wants, though. And I guess some (ok, a lot) of my songs want to be peppy tunes about the worst of human nature. I have to say, though, I find that contradiction very satisfying.”
It all starts to make sense when you push play. From the opening of “Intro/Sweetness on Earth,” Taylor Brown will stop you in your tracks and make you think about what it is your hearing. Never one to play to convention, she’s made an intro that some friends and colleagues urged her against but that she went ahead with anyway.
Resulting from a last minute call, fifty-eight people showed up at a downtown Sherman Clay piano showroom to simultaneously play fifty plus pianos, which engineer/co-producer Jeff Stuart Saltzman (with whom she’s recorded her last five albums) recorded. The group turned out to be a great pick-up choir as well.
What you hear is tension as fifty pianos sound off, building and building until you feel it’s going to end, then continuing on, always tugging at you, as you restlessly and anxiously await to see where it’s all leading.
“I was told by some people that I should consider shortening the intro. But I tried chopping it and it didn’t work,” she says. “The thing I like about it at the length it is is that, if you let it, it can put you in a kind of trance state. I think each unique brain will make something different of what it picks out and hears in all that sound. I hear little bits of melody pop out but I’m guessing someone else will hear something different according to their own personal library in their noggin. I like to imagine it’s different for everybody and (potentially) different every time you listen, just because of your own magical brain! I’m also aware some people will just hate it and think I’m being self-indulgent. Which I am, but now I’ve told you why.”
That mindset, that unwavering, uncompromising dedication to her music, making sure it translates as well on tape as it does in her head, is what makes Rachel Taylor Brown and thus World So Sweet such an interesting experience. It’s the type of record where, if you only casually spin it, it will leave you missing out on nuances, intricacies and rewards that can only come with closer acquaintanceship.
But, you’ll have to listen to the album yourself, and not just read a press release, to fully grasp and comprehend Rachel Taylor Brown and World So Sweet.