It’s great to hear from a director whose films are so entrenched in music, so connected that it feels like there’ music pulsing from deep within the celluloid itself. He not only populates his films with real musicians like Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, he repeatedly commissions these amazing scores from artists as diverse as RZA and Neil Young – soundtracks that not only further the art of film scoring but elevate his films exponentially.
Of course it shouldn’ come as too much of a surprise that Jim Jarmusch, director of Down By Law, Dead Man and Night on Earth would actually make music himself. In the 80′ he was part of the No Wave movement out of New York, as vocalist and keyboardist in the Del -Byzanteens, which also featured John Lurie (The Lounge Lizards) on sax. And this four track EP is apparently only the beginning of a bunch of music recently recorded under the Squrl moniker.
The project began in 2009 when Jarmusch and drummer Carter Logan hooked up with producer/ engineer Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend/ Sleigh Bells) to record some incidental music for the film The Limits of Control. They called themselves Bad Rabbit, though they’ve since changed their name, perhaps to celebrate the way backwoods types say squirrel, just before they skin and eat them.
There’ a real desert highway feel to some of the material here, particularly the opener Pink Dust, reminiscent of the widescreen instrumental jams of Gary Arce’ Yawning Man project. The guitar is big and fuzzy, feedback prone with lumbering slow riffs; the beats are similarly lumbering and metronomic. It’s the desert highway by way of My Bloody Valentine, with dense guitar the main feature here, aside from a random tape loop in French and halting English counting down over the top.
When Jarmusch steps up to the mic and sings we couldn’ be anywhere but New York, and post Sonic Youth, because it’s hard not to be reminded of Lee Ranaldo’ approach to vocals. The music too, with its heavy reliance on guitar does bear some similarities with SY, however this trio, still forming their own identity don’ appear to be in a hurry to limit themselves.
There’ even a cover of Elvis Presley’ Little Sister, a sweet, loud, yet swampy dirge that replaces any kind of Elvis hip shaking groove with disaffected lacsidasical numbness. Ultimately though it feels a little too constrained by the source material, perhaps a little too conventionally song based for the rest of the EP, with Jarmusch seeming to struggle to get all the words out.
Some Feedback for Josez Van Wissem is very much what the title suggests, yet this isn’ a cavern of echoing chaos or Jarmusch’ Arc Weld, but rather a sweet, gentle almost ethereal drone, dedicated to the lute player, with whom Jarmusch collaborated with on two albums last year. As the final track on the EP it feels like a statement of intent, an early hint that Squrl are a little outside the box.
You get the sense that this is a band still in the process of finding themselves. The four tracks on this limited EP could scarcely be more different. Jarmusch seems to like to play slow and loud, and everything feels big and dare I say widescreen.
