Dried roses #1: Martyn Bennett, Hayden Pedigo
Here's where I'll tell you what to listen to, from now on.
I have found that my unquenchable thirst for new music is inextricably linked to me needing to share and write about my very favorite discoveries. As I've quit Twitter (hopefully for good this time), Dried roses will now have to fulfil that role.
Also planning to quit Twitter, for good? I'd strongly recommend a week's hike through the Knoydart peninsula and across the isle of Rùm. In a lot of ways I was a lot more disconnected from things than I usually am, but rather than the degree of connection, it reaffirmed to me that it is a quality of connection I had been missing. As alienated as I can feel from people whose every hot take I can read, I felt supremely connected with the world as we wandered the Rough Bounds, even as we came across one, two, or no other hikers at all.
Getting to the town of Inverie, if not by boat, requires at least a 27 km hike over mountainous and boggy terrain. We took the long way, from the Glenfinnan Viaduct, walking 58 km in three days, and staying in bothies every night. The bothy was a revelation: there's over one hundred of them, all across Scotland. They're very basic shelters – sometimes huts, sometimes repurposed houses – that are free to use, as long as you leave the place as you found it. My favorites had a fireplace, some surfaces to sleep on, an incredible view, and not much beyond that. No electricity, poor insulation - oh well. You're also rarely alone in a bothy, even if it's just through the omnipresent guest book. A great way to find out who walked the same route and slept on the same plank as you yesterday, how many ticks they had, and whether they'd been able to source any firewood from the rare and ransacked forests. More than once we ran into someone whose name I'd previously seen in a guest book.
Martyn Bennett - Bothy Culture
Our stay in the Dibidil bothy on the isle of Rùm felt especially magical. The only hiker we encountered on the way – a toothless geriatric Scot – had told us "there isn't a bothy on Rùm," and until the gray stone building finally appeared in the distance, I was worried the old man had cursed us. He hadn't – we'd been blessed with 24 hours of rest, recuperation, sunlight and good company. We spent the evening with a group of three friends – two from Munich, one from Edinburgh – keeping the fire going and sharing music: Jake Xerxes Fussell, Blind Willie Johnson, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Ye Vagabonds.
My favorite discovery, though, only hit me at home. Bothy Culture (1997) by Martyn Bennett isn't much of a cozy album, per se, but it does celebrate the 'communitas' of the bothy. It's a Celtic fusion album by the late piper Martyn Bennett, borrowing from Gaelic, Scandinavian and Islamic music, and aiming it directly at the dancefloor, at the time dominated by breakbeat and drum and bass.
It's an incredible, sprawling album. Undeniably danceable, beautifully political. It features a recital of the poem 'Hallaig' about the Highland Clearances of the nineteenth century that depopulated large swaths of Western Scotland. As bagpipe music often is, it's jubilant and mournful at the same time. A 2018 article in Scottish magazine Bella Caledonia has this to say: "...whether the rhythmic entrainment of the rave or nightclub or the cultural intimacy and conviviality of the bothy, both are a vital a source of this dynamic life force – a feeling of connection to something outside and beyond our own individual, corporeal existence." The bothy as a "totemic symbol" of conviviality and companionship, sometimes in the immediate sense, sometimes by walking in the literal footsteps of hundreds of fellow ramblers.
Hayden Pedigo - Live in Amarillo, Texas
Speaking of shelter: there's a live album out by fingerstyle guitarist Hayden Pedigo, called Live in Amarillo, Texas – recorded at not just his biggest ever hometown show, but his biggest ever show, period. Amarillo's known for its volatile weather patterns, being prone to spring-tornadoes, devastating hailstorms, long droughts and floods (clearly a great place to house America's primary nuclear weapons factory), and Pedigo, during the show, coins the city slogan: "Amarillo, not for beginners". But at the same time, he does a remarkable job of putting up comfortable refuge as the elements are raging around him. He says "the pauses in my music are there because in Amarillo the flat plains that go on forever and ever, feel like a giant long pause" – and really the whole album provides that temporary quiescence. [Insert bothy comparison.] I'll just add that Pedigo himself has compared this album to John Fahey's The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick and Townes Van Zandt's Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, which definitely holds up.
MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
If you're reading this, you've probably already listened to MJ Lenderman's AOTY-contender Manning Fireworks. It's even better than expected, and I'm so glad I'm not on Twitter anymore for what I'm assuming is some unhinged discourse about whether or not Lenderman's a good songwriter.
I bring up Twitter, because a lot of themes on Manning Fireworks, bring forth the exact kind of discussion that Twitter is definitely no longer the place for, if it has ever been. You're much better off just reading Steven Hyden's review of the album for Uproxx, who describes Lenderman as "one of our most perceptive writers addressing the deeply confused state of modern masculinity." He also writes this, to which I have nothing to add:
"I don’t know that I have ever heard “dudes rock” uttered or texted or tweeted without some element of self-mockery. Most guys I know feel at least a little self-conscious about enjoying stereotypical “guy” stuff, like betting on football or eating at Buffalo Wild Wings, and there’s an instinctual desire to defuse that feeling by exaggerating their “dudeness” to the point of knowing silliness. It’s a defense mechanism at a time when the expectations for “acting like a man” have never been less clear. Nevertheless, at the root of “dudes rock” is a genuine yearning for community in a culture where men are more isolated (and suicidal) than ever. For me the most heartbreaking moment on Manning Fireworks occurs in 'Joker Lips', when Lenderman sings, “Please don’t laugh all half of what I said / is a joke.” Pouring your heart out and having it treated as a punchline — I don’t know that there is a better definition of loneliness than that."
Wildflowers
I'm going to try to limit these newsletters to 1,000 words. We'll see how that goes. But I also want to highlight some stuff that I currently don't have the words or the time for.
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness. Very much aspiring to, and often achieving the same level of transcendence as Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders' Promises.
M.Haiux - Summer Nights and Still Water. I've been reading the first book Knausgaard's My Struggle and this album's been a perfect accompaniment. There's a resemblance to the way Knausgaard drifts in and out of the overarching narrative, Liverpool-based guitarist M.Haiux drifts in and out of improvisation, and the way I drift in and out of a slumber as I listen and read.
I'll leave it at that. Let's see if I can make this a weekly or a bi-weekly affair.