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DAILY RECORDS: D. Charles Speer

Posted by: Necci – Mar 24, 2011

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D. Charles Speer - Arghiledes (Thrill Jockey)
D. Charles Speer & the Helix - Leaving the Commonwealth (Thrill Jockey)

I have to hand it to any artist who can thoroughly and genuinely fuck with any preconceptions a listener might have when approaching his or her work. D. Charles Speer, most recognized as guitarist for the just-shy-of-classifiable New York improvisational outfit the No Neck Blues Band, seems to have come to just such an end result with his two newest releases. Wildly divergent takes on the music of his youth, Speer's newest releases delve into Greek rebetikas and Southern bar rock respectively, a dichotomy steeped in his own experiences growing up in a Greek family in the American South. This decision shows moments of brilliance, but also moments which fall flat.

Arghiledes, Speer's take on Greek rebetika forms, stands out as the more inspired of the two albums. Rebetikas, a form of urban folk music that originated in Greece in the early part of the 20th century, could possibly be described as a sort of Mediterranean blues if one were inclined towards such cross-cultural metaphor--a mournful depiction of sex, drugs, and violence that drew ire from authorities and bourgeois audiences, but has sustained a century-long following. Speer's version, while obviously a labor of love, thankfully doesn't play it too straight. Traditional instrumentation--bouzuki, baglama, etc.--comes into play, but so do overdriven guitars and trippy electronic effects. Some might cry foul at what could be interpreted as an outsider's revisionism, but ultimately a personalized take on the music seems to pay more tribute to its nonconformist spirit than a version employing stricter aesthetic parameters.

Leaving the Commonwealth, however, doesn't really live up to it's companion's promise. Running through nine songs that attempt to run the gamut of Southern music, the album comes off less inspired, missing the mark and coming up short on the music's spirit. The band pulls together disparate influences--there are hints of 70s Nashville, of Cajun dance tunes, and less-than-subtle tributes to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Charlie Daniels. It's all an admirable endeavor for a bunch of New York avant-garde artists, but the end product lacks much of the grit and hard-scrabble determination of its source material. There's little new spin on the style, as with Arghiledes, and it often seems like the band is slumming it, offering an academic take on what works best at its most whiskey-bent and hell-bound.

In releasing these two albums simultaneously, Speer almost guarantees that each listener will prefer one to the other. It's a bold and admirable move to attempt such disparate source material, and even when Speer's albums fall short, it's hard to blame him for giving it a shot.

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D. Charles Speer will give a solo performance, concentrating mainly on material from Arghiledes, at Cous Cous on Thursday, March 24th at 10 PM with Pigeons.

By Graham Scala


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