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J. Edward Keyes on Shuffle


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Published: Jan 23, 2007

David Kilgour

The Far Now

(Merge)

January is a quiet time in the record industry, a dull weigh station between the rush of the holiday sales push and the hype and hum surrounding the Grammys. It's the kind of month when sales slow to a crawl and the RIAA launches desperate, wrongheaded attacks on mixtape DJs in a vain attempt to terrify the very consumers they're trying to win back. It's an odd combination of malaise and misanthropy. In other words, it's the perfect kind of month for a new David Kilgour record.

Along with his brother Hamish, David Kilgour was a founding member of the outstanding New Zealand group The Clean — a group that, like The Go-Betweens and Mission of Burma, has the unfortunate privilege of being written about more than they are actually listened to. In 1992 Kilgour released his first solo album, Here Come the Cars, a quiet, stunning record full of interlaced guitars and indirect melodies. Like most quiet, stunning records released in the early '90s, it's currently out of print (though you can find scattered copies of the 2005 reissue online).

Since that time, his career has been a fascinating series of peaks and detours. His last record, 2004's Frozen Orange, belongs squarely in the latter category. An oddball mix-up of country twang and churning organs, the album had none of the ease and effortlessness that characterized Kilgour's strongest work.

This new record sets most of that aright. Easily Kilgour's strongest work since Cars, The Far Now takes its time getting nowhere. It's a collection of spare, gentle songs that capitalizes on Kilgour's knack for understated beauty. Kilgour weaves guitars together like a moth spinning silk, working layer on top of delicate layer until it forms a trembling, gauzy veil. Violins and cellos float upward and dissolve, slide guitars keen and wail, and organs twinkle balefully in the distance.

Kilgour's lyrics are mostly incidental, composed of sense imagery and repetition, but this marvelous imprecision just adds to the record's miasmal mood. "Everything's under fog, that's plain to see," Kilgour murmurs early in The Far Now's first half. It's allegory, elegy and self-summation all at once.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)