LOFTY PILLARS - Amsterdam

"Amsterdam" is the second and final album by the chamber mini-ensemble Lofty Pillars, a side-project of that alchemist of contemporary music who goes by the name of Michael Krassner.

Krassner originally served as the mastermind and artistic director of the Boxhead Ensemble, a vehicle for artistic experiments that over time brought together, across successive projects, musicians from Dirty Three, Tortoise, Gastr Del Sol and others. Lofty Pillars is his umpteenth creation, in which he alternates his usual role as conductor with the far more unusual one of singer-songwriter: rather than a soundtrack (as was the case with "Dutch Harbor – Where The Sea Breaks Its Back"), what's on offer here is a 'new' and genuine brand of folk-rock, semi-handmade in character and surprisingly classical in its roots.

Krassner draws on the old tradition of the American popular song, but the inventiveness lies in how he reworks it, injecting it with the unusual lifeblood of chamber music. To pull off this almost unprecedented marriage, Krassner relies on the invaluable help of the genius Fred Lonberg-Holm: his are the enchanting, refined arrangements, which blend the lace of the chamber orchestra with the aching evocativeness of an alt-country band. The result is a decadent melancholy, over whose notes Krassner's voice and whisper brush against the superhuman, faintly blurred tenderness of a storyteller from another era.

The title track "Amsterdam" is a deception: it opens with the sound of a string orchestra tuning up, then settles with exotic grace onto a bed of piano, classical guitar and Latin-flavoured percussion, until the voice arrives, warm, smooth, inviting, as if the scene were the á-la-frontera branch of some elegant Broadway lounge bar. And it turns out to be damnably (deliberately) misleading, since with this opening the album hands the listener a false Krassner, moving with the irritating grace of an old-school crooner feigning melancholy, while at the same time revealing a warm expressive ability worthy of the best of Convertino — as if it were merely a cameo of him, since shortly afterwards it turns out he only meant to parody it.

It's from the next track ("Roll Down") that the album settles into the expected folk groove, though his voice still appears warped through a highly personal soul inflection, and the arrangement of piano, viola and cello brings to mind Paul Simon, but surprisingly also Billy Joel. With "Guest Of Dishonour" comes a folk ballad with a singer-songwriter flavour, here even more reflective and subdued, and from this point on, the further you get into the record, the more the songs — starting with the stark, Simon & Garfunkel-style folk of the opener — gain in emotional and musical depth. Krassner's vocal turns are in fact backed by a staggering line-up: Will Hendricks on piano, Jen Paulsen on viola, Jessica Billey on violin, Fred Lonberg-Holm himself on cello, and many others.

The whole record rests on this duality of intent, with structures that are essentially singer-songwriter in nature, apparently simple in their mostly Dylan-esque roots, and thus built around Krassner's voice, which moves from the warm melody of old-fashioned, pure American folklore to moments of grace, when it expresses itself in near-consoling whispers — always joined, however, by the unexpected element of a distinctly orchestral nature (a harpsichord in "Sons Of Solemn Men", at times languid, at others frenzied, lending lightness, tone, power and grace all at once; a cello lavish with laments like the weeping of virgins in "Eulogy"). These are timeless songs that are nevertheless never bare, able to win you over and captivate from the very first listen.

"Field Of Honour" is Dylan. Dead, buried, and on the third day risen again on Earth. A resurrected Dylan, who thanks the strings and violins for keeping quiet, for once, and for sparing him a worse awakening by not piercing his heart again. And once more the overall feel is that of a long ride through the desert, but it's the "post" reinterpretation that keeps a song this old still relevant today.

Even on an instrumental and compositional level, the same eternal ambivalence holds true, with "Mothers Of Arms" offering a straightforward revisiting of the classic folk piece in a more modern, slow-motion key, as opposed to "Down The River", poignant and ineffably absorbing, yet delicate, with that unmistakable touch of melancholy that moistens your eyes and softens your heart before piercing it — only for it to close with two minutes of instrumental passages and jam-session interplay ranging from liquid ambient to electric soul-blues to free jazz improvisation.

And even where orchestral grace takes over from the folk element, it's the rhythm that carries the track, which ends up being almost danceable in how it unfolds ("Three Men"), despite song lengths that, often exceeding six minutes, push more in the direction of a chamber-orchestra overture than that of a folk ballad.

The closing tracks, finally, with no less chamber-music grace and melodies as light as wings suspended in the sky, seem to cast a new bridge toward the future, a seed drawn from an ancient and noble source: by freeing the music of the forebears from its most markedly southern or country connotations, and revisiting it in the purest musical key, the orchestral one, the simplest yet seemingly arcane mystery is revealed, and timeless-sounding melodies take on the colors of the present and new shades, almost impressionistic in taste.

It is a primordial, original lyricism which, transfiguring itself in its elegantly "post" nature, becomes liquid poetry of the present day, an accessible synthesis to be freely drawn upon.

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12/05/2009