Jules ShearBetween Us
Windham Hill (1998)
Stop the presses: Miss Diana actually likes a record on Windham Hill. No, make that, she loves a record on Windham Hill (does this mean I have to stop calling it Wimptom Hill?)
Jules Shear is one of those guys who has been kicking around since my college days, always critically acclaimed, but fame and fortune seem to have escaped him...one of those peripheral characters who, when you mention his name at a party, music people say “oh yeah, I hearda him” but nobody can ever sing the tune....
Hey, perhaps this is it! This is a record of duets, with both women and men. Frankly, the first few songs try too hard, and I wasn’t too enthused at first, but once you can get past the first two you’re out of the woods. Actually, “It’s all over but the smoke” (a duet with Ron Sexsmith) is a great allegory for doomed relationship:
& it’s all over but the smoke & the wind it curls around oh & everywhere to my face and hair it clings you know fire burns on hope now there’s nothing but the smoke the alarm was just too loud to let it ringI also liked “Let’s Go Slow” (a duet with Jules’ brother Rob Shear), “On These Wheels Again” (duet with Susie Cowsill), and “Revenge” (duet with Freedy Johnston) but my favorite is “You Might As Well Pray” (duet with Amy Rigby).
Heck, there’s more songs I like on this record but telling you the names of songs does you no good, so let me try and explain what this record is about. It starts out sorta slow and country, but he simmers down (thankfully) after the first coupla songs and it just turns into a mellow set of songs that you could play just as easily on your car stereo or at a dinner party (see my earlier commentary on Windham Hill Records at dinner parties...); the kind of record most people are going to like, but this one has substance. It’s hard not to be charmed by Jules Shear, and it’s very hard not to be charmed by these songs.
I like the idea of doing duets with people like Carole King and Suzy Roche perhaps better than I liked the execution, but if you can get beyond the credits (as if they’d be necessary to sell this record--whoops, given his past, maybe it is necessary.....but this record works on its own strength) you can just enjoy the straightforward rhythms and nice mix of well-matched voices. There’s a little bit of interesting instrumentation on it too, but it’s the voices that are featured, and the voices you should buy this record for. Plunk down the $14.95 for this record if you like Andy Irvine, Kathleen Wilhoite, Morphine and Richard Thompson ballads; skip it if you can’t get past Wonderstuff and Snoop.
Okay, now for the liner notes & press release..... I always like to review records before I read about what I was supposed to like about it, according to the Powers That Be. He wrote all the songs. That’s good. He helped create the MTV “Unplugged” series. I guess that’s okay, at least some of the time. Okay, that’s all you need to know from the press release.....now it’s time to run to the local record shop and purchase this lil gem.
Material (with William S. Burroughs)
Okay, I will admit that William S. Burroughs is sort of a sacred cow to me.
I’m not going to say anything bad about him. I couldn’t get through the cut &
paste phase, but I’m still not going to say anything bad about him.
Even so, this is a very interesting record. It mixes Burroughs reading (and
re-reading) an excerpt from “The Road to the Western Lands” to music, sort of
a John Zorn meets Lady Miss Kir hip swingin’ jazzy techno thing that is very
appealing. “Western Lands” is one of my favorite Burroughs pieces, too, which
helps. I actually carry part of it around in my pocketbook:
The most arbitrary, precarious, and bureaucratic immortality blueprint was
drafted by the ancient Egyptians........
And here you are in your luxury condo, deep in the Western Lands...you got no
security. Some disgruntled former employee sneaks into your tomb and throw
acid on your mummy. Or sloshes gasoline all over it and burns the shit out of
it. “OH......someone is fucking with my mummy.....”
You gotta love mummies, don’t you?
They’ve sampled it, but not so much that the reading is obscured by the
music. My only criticism is that they kept repeating the same passages--a
double-edged sword, because it is interesting to see how they change the music
to the same words, but annoying because I’d like to hear the whole reading
accompanied by the music. More more more! I want more! I guess that’s the
problem.
Several of the Burroughs recordings done with music in the past have had such
loud music that the readings were obscured. Not so here. This record is sensual. Very sensual. I’d love to have sex to it, if the idea of seeing William S. Burroughs naked wasn’t so spooky.
The Road to the Western Lands (1997)
Triloka Records (www.triloka.com)
