GREG MULLEN - The Hungry Ocean

Seen from an airplane window, the ocean looks like a single, immense living organism. Hungry and boundless, just like the human soul. Greg Mullen's songs are crossed by waves, vessels, sea creatures: but what always emerges from those waters is the reflection of a restless face.

It takes just a few strokes for the Massachusetts songwriter to sketch his own self-portrait: “I make music with a guitar, two hands and a mouth. Sometimes those hands and mouth and guitar are joined by keyboards, bass, trumpet, drums and friends.” Nothing more is really needed, after all. And “The Hungry Ocean” is the most eloquent proof of that.

What strikes you immediately about Mullen's debut album is the sheer directness of the songs, the fruit of just three days of live recording in a Boston studio: tracks that, despite their varying tones and instrumentation, tell their stories plainly, without ever losing themselves in distractions. Built around a twilight-toned indie-folk, “The Hungry Ocean” is an enveloping, full-bodied album, with a shy aftertaste of sweetness, able to let notes surface that are at times dry, at times sharp.

The record opens triumphantly with “Pipes That Drain Out Of The Sea”, where the rhythm section's cheerful swagger is framed by the fresh colors of the horns, creating a festive atmosphere that returns later on “Small Acts Of Rebellion In All Night Diners”. For the rest, “The Hungry Ocean” centers on Mullen's unhurried guitar picking, which under the glow of a melancholy moon lets itself be lulled by whispers of harmonica, mournful trumpet and caressing piano (“Internal Combustion”, “Ten Thousand Years”, “Song For Yoko Ono”), while in the moments of greatest pathos it is swept up by stormy instrumental crescendos, over which the horns' shadows stretch out to create melancholy sunsets (“Telephone”, “They Looked Like Giants From Down There”).

Mullen's voice takes part in this ocean crossing with great intensity, breaking against the waves, resurfacing before going under, docilely riding the swells or heading, anguished, toward the shore. In the refined songwriting of this American singer-songwriter, mindful of the most tormented Noah And The Whale (“Goldfish”, “They Looked Like Giants From Down There”), the introspective reworking of life experiences fades into the reverberation of dreams and visions. Just like the image of the two narwhals depicted by Briana Horrigan on the album cover: “It reminds me of a cross between a scientific illustration and a children's book,” Mullen notes, “which seems perfect for narwhals, real animals that could just as well be imaginary.”

More than a concept album, though, for Mullen “The Hungry Ocean” is a kind of organic cluster of impressions: “All the songs are completely redefined by their placement within the larger whole of the record, opening up a wealth of new possible interpretations: it's something instinctive and mysterious,” he explains.

While the gentle accents of “Small Acts Of Rebellion In All Night Diners” venture to skirt the banks of the Okkervil river, Mullen's characters lay bare the full weight of their longings and defeats, as if among the shadows of a Hopper painting: “And all the gridlocked hearts sing give yourself to love”. Because, as the wistful farewell of “The Bottom Of The Ocean” suggests, the human heart is not made to sink into nothingness, but to yearn for the farthest horizon of the sea: “Our hearts are sure to turn cold if we let them drag us to the bottom of the ocean”.

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05/10/2010