At first blush,
the pairing seems odd: abrasive American indie-rock idol and
whimsical French soundtrack doyen. Like horseradish and marzipan,
they’re two great tastes, but do they taste good together? To
the few thousand people out there who know her work with Crowsdell
and her devastating solo CDs, Shannon Wright is the quintessence of
the tortured artist, all raw nerves and naked emotion. Yann
Tiersen’s name might not be immediately recognizable to
American audiences, but the French multiinstrumentalist’s
delicate and impossibly pretty soundtrack to the surprise hit Amélie has
saturated the collective consciousness in a way that Wright’s
music never will.
Beyond the superficial differences, however,
are deeper compatibilities that make the two artists’
self-titled debut an unqualified triumph. Anyone who’s given
Wright more than a cursory listen knows that her songs, though
ferocious and often dissonant, aren’t hapless,
bang-’em-out exercises in catharsis. Instead of the
blues-based I-IV-V progressions of the typical rock song, she
favors intervals more common in contemporary classical music
— and, despite her sometimes scary howl and habit of
recording with noise maestro Steve Albini, she’s fully
capable of delicacy and nuance. The classically trained Tiersen,
for his part, has done time in punk bands and shares Wright’s
fascination with emotional extremes, contrasting textures, and
unconventional structures.
Produced by Fabrice Laureau, who introduced
the pair and served as interpreter, YT
& SW is a study in bleak
romanticism, 10 stunning tracks in which luminous harmonies
materialize from moody maelstroms and dark dirges give way to
ravishing lullabies. Wright wields her famous caterwaul rarely, but
when she does, watch out: “While You Sleep” finds that
savage bellow in fine form, the perfect counterpoint to
Tiersen’s violin, which takes a two-note pattern, blows it
apart, and then grinds its arpeggiated shards to a frenzied
conclusion. Mostly, though, she croons and whispers, letting the
drama develop organically from the evocative, eclectic
orchestration. “Ode to a Friend,” a moody waltz, is both gorgeous
and disturbing, with Tiersen’s piano arabesques darting between
Wright’s tormented lines, which she delivers in a hushed
contralto that’s no less dramatic for its softness. The dreamy
“Dragon Fly” starts out with an almost stereotypically
Gallic accordion and lyrics that seem, at least by Wright standards,
positively uplifting, but a faintly plucked guitar percolates below,
creating nightmarish undertones and making the narrator’s
emergence from a “tall, tall sleep” to wide-eyed courage
seem more like a trial than a reprieve.
On this soundtrack to a documentary inspired
by one of his own albums (whew!), self-proclaimed
“hick-pop” purveyor Jim White assembles like-minded
oddballs to pay tribute to the South. A former military brat whose
family settled in Pensacola, Fla., when he was 5, White understands
that sometimes it takes an outsider to notice the strange allure of
a place, the regional quirks that distinguish it from the rest of
this faceless, franchise-clogged country. Authenticity, a loaded
topic in alt-country circles, isn’t so much rejected as
deconstructed, with former New York Doll David Johansen
cohabitating comfortably with sin-haunted holler-dwellers Lee
Sexton, Clarence Ashley, and Doc Watson. Card-carrying bumpkin
Johnny Dowd makes an appearance, as do indie-rock icons Cat Power
and the Handsome Family. Fortunately, White loves old-time rural
music too much to condescend to it, and his three contributions, as
well as those of his co-conspirators, never stoop to parody. From
the spoken-word introduction by backwater prophet Harry Crews to a
haunting musical-saw rendition of “Amazing Grace” by
Trailer Bride’s Melissa Swingle, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is as richly paradoxical as the region it celebrates.
This article appears in Jun 16-22, 2005.
