JONATHAN RICHMAN - SA

All the great stylistic sagas have, alongside them, figures who, despite having little or nothing to do with the caravan in question, end up thrown bodily into it by sheer historical-geographical happenstance. Punk, with its innate capacity to represent everything and its opposite, has perhaps been the most magnetic force behind this kind of misunderstanding: the fact that figures like Paul Weller, Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson were initially lumped in with it is tangible proof.

An icon of the movement despite himself, thanks to proto-'77 classics like "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso", Boston's Jonathan Richman is in fact a smiling, anything-but-nihilistic tumbler, an unrivalled narrator of satirical vignettes delivered with his delightfully jewish touch. Perennial striped T-shirt, childlike poses, Fifties nostalgia, but also a seasoned knack for churning out irresistible little songs and a voracious curiosity for music from all over the world have made him one of the most adorable and adored losers around. Against all odds, such an eccentric figure has had not only an enormous influence (just ask the indie, twee-pop, lo-fi hordes and company, all indebted to that indolent, pre-slacker approach), but also a career that has carried on uninterrupted for over forty years now.

Produced with his wife Nicole Montalbano and ex-Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison (already alongside Richman in the seminal Modern Lovers), "SA" arrives two years after "Ishkode! Ishkode!", yet it's an album entirely out of time: I defy anyone to pick a song at random from the tracklist and guess when it was recorded. The monosyllabic title refers to "the root note in Indian ragas that Ramakrishna, the much beloved mystic, told his spiritual students to search for underneath all things of this world": and it is indeed India (perhaps more the lo-fi India of disciple Calvin Johnson than the lysergic paradise of the Sixties) that serves as the musical and spiritual beacon for the whole record, whereas the previous album paid its own kind of tribute to Native American chants.

With a tone somewhere between ramshackle and spectral, recalling at times the four-handed album by Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair, the record moves through late-hippie oddities in the vein of Incredible String Band/Pearls Before Swine ("The Fading Of An Old World"), Ivor Cutler-esque harmonium breaths ("O Mind! Let Us Go Home"), acid flashbacks somewhere between Skip Spence and Julian Cope ("A Penchant For The Stagnant"), but also spirited bossa forays ("¡Alegre Soy!", a crystal-clear statement of intent) and gypsy-folk numbers in the style of Beirut ("Yes, Take Me Home"). The hazy mantra of the title track opens and closes the record, while halfway through, the incense-scented eight minutes of "Oh Mind! Just Dance" sprawl out, the kind of thing Allen Ginsberg the musician would have loved.

A melodic gift as outsized as his imperviously punchable face, at 67 Jonathan Richman keeps on going his own way, indifferent to any fashion or judgment: if nothing else, that alone makes it truly impossible not to keep loving him.

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29/10/2018