Drew Danburry
All The Much-Lamented Clarity
Sep 19, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
-
Welcome to Daytrotter
-
Tree On Wheels
original version appears on Besides: Are We Just Playing Around Out Here Or Do We Mean What We Say?
The song title is what a friend once said to describe what it looked when I rode a skateboard. The song has absolutely nothing to do with the title though. The song's about something different.
-
Nirvana By Kurt Cobain
unreleased
This song wasn't really written from the perspective of Kurt Cobain but when I titled it this way as a joke the song itself kind of fit the title well. I like keeping my songs my own, at least in some regard, and letting others lend their own interpretation to things, so the specific meaning to this song will probably just remain between my wife and me for now.
-
Aretex Died In Truth And Co…
unreleased
Sometimes songs should just be enjoyable and not require so much effort on the listener. In this case, I like to pretend that this song is really about the Never Ending Story like the music video portrays.
-
I'm Pretty Sure
original version appears on This Could Mean Trouble, You Don't Speak For The Club
I wrote this song when I was feeling nostalgic for my old friends and hometown that is pretty much overrun with out-of-towners. In a way, I guess it's just an acceptance of life on its own terms and letting go of what once was with the hope that the future has a little more to offer. Or maybe it's just a happy song without a meaning at all.
Drew Danburry, who considers his whereabouts to be California and/or Utah, has a way with his verbosity, his long and stretchy way of just letting it all come out like a pile of slick spaghetti noodles. He lets his thoughts and words just flop out like a meal, like a rainbow trout unhappily and suddenly sun-dappled and fearful of what's coming next - the shortness of breath can't be a good sign. Danburry doesn't bother with summarizations, he just bursts and all of it splatters across the table and you can see it all as it lies there, pow, naked and proud. Just taking his album titles into account and we're led to believe that he's a man that will say his piece when he has it prepared. He might give previews and teasers, prior to the formulation of the final thought. So there's, "Besides: Are We Just Playing Around Out Here Or Do We Mean What We Say?" an addressing of the assumed miniature stature that all of us food-taking and air-sucking people have. Then there's the latest offering, "This Could Mean Trouble, You Don't Speak For The Club," and it's pretty clear that he is more than willing to get out what he needs to get out, without any spokesmen doing the bidding, the denying, the accepting, the lying, the spilling or the explaining. He sounds to have fantasies with the grayness that neither confirms or denies the barest feelings, or the clearest regards. He doesn't long for the ambiguity, but it does make for some interesting considerations and some reckless thinking that leads to any number of places - some good and some most definitely not good. The grayness, which he sings about at the start of the song "Tree On Wheels," is what's unfortunately chosen sometimes, over just a rainy day, which can pass away to another county, another city, working its way through the phone book from left-to-right. He sings about getting to a point where seeing in colors is possible and this is what becomes of his much-lamented and much-agonized clarity, or what it focuses itself out to become when all of the strain has been squinted out. For Danburry, the songs that he writes, are the folk-pop-leaning ways that his definition comes to him, where he's given himself the opportunity to just open up and flop around, making pretty sounds and giving his confusion melody. He sings that, "The truth will leak from pens," and it's always a true enough statement if you keep letting the ink leak and leak and leak until it almost looks like a mess, but then staring upon it as if the pool were a bottomless abyss, the lights start to pop out and reason finds us. Danburry lets his grayness come out as outbursts and as sweet la las, all of it taking on a patter of glazed over worries, like worries with icing on them - as if they are troubling, but not debilitating. "Oh how majestic it is to love a memory," is a line that Danburry uses and while there's much sadness in the thought, there's much beauty as well. He goes this way often and it makes for a humble and radiant feel.
Drew Danburry Official Site
Emergency Umbrella Records
