Le Loup
Undulously Capering With The Country Ghosts
Dec 26, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Morning Song
unreleased
"Morning Song" is the first of three new songs showcased in the session, and it focuses on a more traditional instrumental setup and some simple vocal harmonies. This one can get sticky if we focus too much on perfect execution, especially in the vox area, where we're a far cry from the three tenors. Instead, it sounds best, at least to my ears, when we stop THINKING, and just have fun with it, and try to remember why music moves us so much in the first place. The tone of this song is lighter than the old ones right off the bat, and I think that's a nice change of pace.
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Go East
unreleased
I wasn't completely sold on this song until we played it, once again, with a really pared-down, acoustic-leaning instrumental arrangement. Since we found that format, it's been a lot of fun to play around with, and we've been able to put a lot more thought into phrasing. It's not quite as lighthearted, but I really enjoy the continuity between the lyrics and the melody. I think they mirror each other pretty well in terms of tone and pacing. The drawn-out phrasing alongside the harmonic intervals (lots of fifths and seconds) gives it a nice sense of age and also a kind of physical space.
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Le Loup
original version appears on The Throne Of The Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly
The only one we played from the old repertoire, since it lends itself most easily to a simple arrangement. I think this was the first take of two or three (or four?) that we did for this song it's not perfect, but something was captured in this take that didn't quite translate in the others, and again, it's much more important to me to catch some sort of honest emotion rather than to hit every note and every beat. Out of all the songs from the last album, these lyrics are the silliest if taken at all at face value, but I've always loved the way they fit together phonetically, and just the way they (literally) feel when sung they just kind of twist together in the right way, so who cares about poetic weight, eh? I love the song, and i hope I always will.
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Celebration
unreleased
I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot, but simplicity is really important. The whole point of this song originally was for it to be completely translatable to any setting, and for it to focus almost solely on a sort of guttural melodic and rhythmic interaction. The lyrics are pretty lightweight meant to be easily memorized and sung loosely by any number of people, not really meant to be academic in any way- and the song structure relies only on some sort of instrumental drone to keep the melody in context, and a hefty amount of rhythm, delivered through whatever medium available. Now, since we've started playing it on stage, it's grown into something more calculated and involved, arrangement-wise. So it's nice to be put back in a setting which calls for structural restraint, and forces us to reduce the whole thing back down to its simplest elements. There ought to be a feeling of joy and celebration no matter how or where it's played, and hopefully that came through.
Did the Association ever let the banjo play, to take us out for a wining and a dining? It's one of the first thoughts that clambers into the noodle when Le Loup's "Go East" starts playing, when that waterfall of voices crests and then tumbles over the worn down, rocky ledge together, sending a spectacular rush into your wheelhouse. The windy has spoken and it has stormy eyes, but the band from this nation's capital wear the sheep's clothing more oft than it does not, providing a bed of undulous growths and steamings, of naturally occurring geysers and gently waving fields of wheat and prairie grasses that were all that could be seen past a Mississippi River and of the broad span of trees just on the other side of the Cumberland Gap.
It's inconspicuous and without the threatening risk of claws and pointy teeth, of master plans and schemes, breathing down your neck with a carnivore's hotness and musk. It persists like a ribbon of smoke trailing off of an extinguished candle, swimming and escaping, sort of joyous and sort of frightened and temperamental. It is wonderfully ghosty and so much of the best musics - the ones that we find so hard to put our fingers on, to appreciate the full story of their tastes and of the tints and tinctures and ramifications - are the same way, implacably moody and with tendrils that cling to the past and drag us along with them with or against our better wishes. The Washington, D.C., band brings seductive spookiness with them and an indecisive inner voice that takes on a gypsy's constitution of leavings and wanderings, always reaching out to the open country and leaving things behind and staking out for a place to lay some more tracks where they don't fall directly upon so many other tracks. A house is a home, they suggest, but one gets a genuine sense of a restlessness that feels crippling in the songs on the band's latest and fantastic full-length, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, as if they peer out through the windows and just envy those bobbing and weaving birds something fierce.
The dark is in spite of the night, in opposition of the night, perhaps. It's a strain to just give in to the night, so there's a good thrashing and gnashing.
Le Loup Official Site
Hardly Art Records
