Guarneri Underground, Wander the World (Twisted Fiddle Music, 2002)
Before talking about this album in particular, I have to explain something: I came into folk music backwards.
Celtic music has hit the public consciousness so hard that I get odd reactions when I point out I hardly knew a thing about it until well after I was steeped in Boiled in Lead's mix of Irish, African, Middle Eastern, Punk, and everyone else they could find. I was horribly disappointed to learn that the Flash Girls' warped humour and bittersweet beauty was not the norm of acoustic folk; I'd dared to hope that I'd just been opened to a universe of such delightful music, not the work of tradition's changeling children. I discovered Värttina and Garmarna's feral and sensual sound before I knew anything at all about the heritage they were drawing upon. Most of the big names in the Folk Revival came to my attention well after their nineties and more recent descendants. And so on. And so on.
I have since developed an appreciation for traditional sounds traditionally played. But I still find that a group that sits complacently within the boundaries is a hard sell, while groups that warp their roots or explore the interstices tend to wake my enthusiasm.
So Guarneri Underground ought to be a perfect fit. And in their best moments, they are. This album is a wild ride in all the best ways.
With Guarneri Underground, hard rock mixes with bits of Irish Fiddle, Middle Eastern-influenced singing, African and even Latin rhythms -- and there I start to get lost. I don't know the roots well enough to label them all. Nor do I care. It's not the intellect that's excited. Without knowing the details, I still love the way the elements come together -- those I know come from clashing sources, and those I only suspect of wandering. While style may jump drastically between tracks, or even within a track, the group works smoothly, each member sure of themselves and of their companions.
The opening track, "Liquid Silver," expresses some of this well, starting with an electric Celtic sound that soon begins its transmutation. The lyrics talk about two people meeting; the first is travelling East to discover all the things they cannot find at home: self-knowledge, and fate, and love, and newness. The second hungers for the same things -- but is going Westward. The story can be taken as a bittersweet meeting and parting -- or as the band's philosophical approach to their music.
Oh, and the song is luscious. Beth Quist, the singer and the song's author, has an astonishing range, leaping easily between the notes, and expert on the more Middle-Eastern trills. And the instruments combine seamlessly, beginning with drums both rock and African, picking up a fiddle along the way.
"Monsters" continues in much the same vein, though the tradition is moving rapidly East and South, and there's less beauty and more claws, no fiddle and more guitar. Lyrically, the subject matter has moved on; but still, like the last song, the monsters seem to be both real and metaphoric, psychological and very human.
The quality drops somewhat with "Crazy" and "Life Is Full of Surprises". There's nothing wrong with either song; they've both got a good beat, some meaning and thought, and the band is as together as before. They just don't seem to have quite the spark of the first two.
They have little else in common. "Crazy" is the first outright rock, though there's a feel to it that definitely identifies it as another Beth Quist-penned track. "Life Is Full of Surprises," a collaboration between guitarist and African percussionist Mohammed Shaibu and more standard drummer TJ Morris, is jazzy reggae, though the fiddle still sneaks in and has its say.
Then there's "Tarot." Fiddle and hammered dulcimer get a great hook to start this, and Beth Quist gets two vocal lines, one a staccatto repetitive line that's as much a part of the beat as the drums, the other a soft wordless drifting in the background. The actual lyrics -- I presume by the song's author Jeffrey Sick, though the liner notes are not clear which member sings which song -- are done in talking blues, a prose tale of an encounter with strange magic.
The rest of the album does, as the title suggests, "Wander this World." I'll save most of the rest for the listener to savour and to discover for themselves. "Pami Music" is the one song I recommend to the skip button, as the singer's voice and the sung melody grate badly. "Galapagos," a worldbeat jazz instrumental with a touch of Latin, is in tight contention with "Liquid Silver" as my ultimate favourite. The last song, "Kashmir," is divided into two tracks, the first a wordless vocal and electric guitar introduction, the second a take on the Led Zeppelin song that's about as straightforward as this group is likely to get. It makes a damn fine close, actually, driving hard right into the final silence. It's almost enough to convince me to start the album right over. Heck. Maybe I will.
Here's Guarneri Underground's Web site.
