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The vocal half of the guitar-vox duo Mecca Normal has struck out on her own. As a dynamic frontwoman for a rock n' roll band, as well as an accomplished poet and essayist, Smith is no stranger to the limelight. What may surprise some folks, however, is that this time around she's left her vocals behind.
Filling her debut solo album with hypnotic, improvised compositions, Jean Smith has attempted to document the "creation of music," as she puts it. From its embryonic first scratchings to its more polished overdubs and loops, the evolution of a musical idea is documented here with varying degrees of success. Some tracks, intertwining guitars, saxophones and repeated spoken lines, lull the listener into a trance. It's as if Steve Reich found a distortion pedal. Other cuts jar one awake with grating, stumbling clashes between instruments -- think of two saxophonists, drunk on Mad Dog, bound together in a three-legged race. While not a discordant mess or tiresome squeaky jazz, these more challenging tracks are certainly a far cry from the lulling repetitions of Philip Glass, which many of the more soothing meditations herein suggest.
As with Glass' Einstein on the Beach, Smith describes her intention to create not only an art of the mind but also a portrait of the modern man. She details the image of a man, somewhere deep in a New York office building, thinking back to a time when, as a child, he played music with his mother. Back then he was happy and free, unencumbered by the complexities he's erected around himself. Smith's solo endeavor aims to portray the painful nostalgia this man feels as he remembers. Perhaps it's esoteric. Maybe it's artsy-farsty gobbledygook. But riding the bus into work this morning, listening to Smith's CD, I looked out the window to spot a pair of feet peeking out from under the shrubs of our city's courthouse. A briefcase stoof nearby. In our stifling heat, a man--perhaps early for an appointment, or maybe unable to find the strength to start his day--must have been taking whatever relief he could find in the cool, damp soil. In that moment, as Smith's score lazily rumbled and fussed in my ears, I felt she knew exactly what she was talking about.
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