:: Track Listing

1. Static on the Radio
2. Bluebird
3. Combing My Hair in a Brand New Style
4. That Girl From Brownsville Texas
5. Borrowed Wings
6. If Jesus Drove a Motor Home
7. Objects in Motion
8. Buzzards of Love
9. Alabama Chrome
10. Phone Booth in Heaven
11. (Hidden) Land Called Home

:: Record Review

Jim White

Drill A Hole In That Substrate and Tell Me What You See
(Luaka Bop; 2004)

Rating: 79%
Combined Rating: 78%


I like how Jim White resigns himself to white noise. I think it says a lot about a person.

You see, I’ve been told that the difference between Heaven and Hell is this: There will come a time when, standing at the foot of God, you will realize the presence of eternal love. This is Heaven. When you become akin to the fact that you have always denied this love, the pain will be excruciating, and this is Hell. In between is frightening white noise. Maybe I’m just getting older, closer to death and more lazy in my resolve, but I know it’s coming, that white noise, it’s multiplying belligerently.

On Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See, Jim White’s most recent release for David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, the realm between Heaven and Hell is menacing and relentless. There is the burden of being prostrate before a grey god. Any unknowable reality is thinly grasped as superstition and sin. Ghosts of dead bodies linger in the drinking water, and a prayer is only as saintly as the loins of a girl from Brownsville, Texas. This is where love must find a home, where it must be learned and defined.

White does not seem to be ashamed, though, of likening spiritual reverence to sexuality. From truck stop to truck stop in the rain, a kiss or a backseat grope might be the only things to cling to at the end of the night. “Static on the Radio” relates a spectral meeting with a “pretty girl,” but in her absence, the emptiness becomes oppressive and the white noise fills the void, once again reminding the narrator of his dissipating grasp on any solid past or future. This opener is perfect, from the deceiving bass line straight out of Tom Waits’ Mule Variations (1999) to Aimee Mann’s tempered backup. We are allowed to flirt with the buzz that drones in White’s head, and the result is stunning warmth.

“Bluebird” slips deeper into desperation than its predecessor. M. Ward lays a simple acoustic guitar line behind White’s tale of sad, sad love, and together they’re blanketed by heavy bass drums and hayseed synths. The melodica bridges are gothic hymns on fire, and when White sings, “Bluebird/ I love you more than the rain,” one wonders how vicious this rain can get.

Rain does carry much of the symbolic weight of Jim White’s lyrics. It is as if in water, White identifies the chaos, movement, and ephemera of his oppressive static. “Objects in Motion” finds a love as steady and grim as the “surface of the cool brown water.” The funereal instrumentation, touches of clarinet and skittering samples, are vivid but never overpower the calm. In “That Girl From Brownsville Texas,” Jesus may be only as close as the bottom of a bottle of some particularly potent bourbon. The little piano spinning music-box-waltzes allows a clever lapse into country ballad territory, and it all works nicely. “Borrowed Wings,” between tin can banging, pairs White with Canadian alt-country singer Oh Susanna. They sing tiny tales of undeserved grace, recalling the magnificent interplay between Andrew Bird and Nora O’Connor. In time, a melodica punches a thrust of Beelzebub into the mix that, along with Susanna’s salty delivery, pulls the song to earth.

The understanding of movement on this album is its most compelling feature. From Heaven to Hell, down the windowsill, along a muddy bank, movement is entelechy for white noise. If sound is only manifest in movement, then the fuzz that characterizes human life is at the mercy of some constant force of change. When songs step outside of Drill a Hole’s pace, they reveal themselves as missteps, and the consistency of the record suffers.

“Combing My Hair in a Brand New Style” is blues night at the Tron speakeasy. White ditches his swampy hum for rap-sing cadence, and the track just sounds stale. “Alabama Chrome” enlists the help of everyone’s favorite naked chubby guys, the Barenaked Ladies. Jim holds his own, churning through familiar alt-twang fare, but Ed Robertson diarrheas all over what could be an intriguing ditty, ruining it completely. This must be the sound of Jim White getting Danza Slapped, because there can’t be any other way he would collaborate on such schlock.

“If Jesus Drove a Motor Home,” he’d let Air do all the work. Jim White would cradle David Byrne’s balls, on lease, and Christina Aguilera would squeal out the back window. In a rest stop, a psychotic highway nomad would murder the flute player from Dave Matthews Band (who just happened to be in the tour bus next space over) and smear his entrails all over Jesus’ ride. That’s right.

By the end, Jim White seems a bit resolved with his ghosts and plastic crucifixes. With the handicap of not having entered a studio until his forties, White still creates work that maintains a deft wisdom even in its worst choices. Yet, to speak of age and experience as clear signs of greatness is to underestimate this artist’s accomplishment. The songs of Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See are indelibly aware of movement, creating a tension through time and repetition that leave the musician room to “plant them seeds of love.” It could mean one superb future release, but for now, White seems OK with just watching the seeds disappear into the gutter during a rainstorm. Dom Sinacola :: 11 August 2004 |