(2023) Xylouris White - The Forest in Me    


Review:
In his native Crete, Giorgis Xylouris leads an ensemble with his sons (the Xylouris family is both musically and politically prominent in Greece) whose concerts have been reported to last 18 hours. Drummer Jim White, besides his work with The Dirty Three and any number of under- and overground luminaries, is part of The Double, who released an album in 2017 consisting of a single 40-minute song. The Forest in Me, the pair’s fifth album as a duo, White on drums and percussion, Xylouris on Cretan stringed instruments such as the lyra and the laouto – consists of 10 songs and lasts 30 minutes flat. It’s not like the band’s previous albums have been as epic in length as the examples mentioned above; generally, they’ve run 35-40 minutes, with songs averaging out at about 4:30 each. But with Forest, they’re essentially working in miniature, with the majority of the tracks not even breaking the two-minute mark. While that may be plenty of time for enterprising rock ‘n’ rollers to pack in what they need to get across, for a largely instrumental band, it’s barely time to establish a mood. And while some of the tracks on Forest do seem to end just as they really start to cook – the hesitant introduction “Second Sister” departs way too soon, as does the cryptic title track – even the sketchiest songs have an enigmatic yet assertive completeness that speaks to the care that went into shaping them. Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto once again handles production duties and has co-writing credits on three songs (and I suspect plays violin on least one of them), and his rapport with the band and ear for graceful detail are evident. Xylouris White have always been an intuitive band, so it’s unlikely that this album’s brevity is a purposeful artistic roadblock, a self-set obstacle to shake things up. Instead, Forest has the hallmarks of a pandemic album, made by artists in different countries and unable to meet in person. The deep repetitions and cycles of the band’s last effort, 2019’s The Sisypheans would have been impossible under such distanced conditions, and that album’s more overt involvement with traditional Greek music has likewise gone by the wayside. Xylouris for the most part plays the stringed instruments of his homeland closer to the style of an American guitar, throwing down some harmonics on “Witnessed by Angels” and even engaging in some guttural palm mutes on “Red Wine,” perhaps the most straightforwardly hard-hitting track on offer, and, at 3:47, the third-longest on the album. Many of the shorter songs have a subliminal transitoriness that will remind some listeners of White’s work with Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner in the Tren Brothers; others, such as the fluidly mechanical “Night Club,” have the solidity of a narrative exercise. The Forest in Me is also the soundtrack to a documentary/experimental film by UK artist Rebecca Marshall, so it’s possible that some of these songs were made with the intention of accompanying specific scenes, explaining both their incidental nature and thematic concreteness. The longest track, “Memories and Souvenirs,” is the darkest, with scraping, Tony Conradesque violin (by Picciotto, perhaps), bells and chimes from White, and Xylouris keeping the rhythm with a blunt strumming pattern, when he’s not playing long, bent notes against the horsehide rasp of the fiddle. It would make a fitting, if downbeat, ending for the album, but it’s the following “Long Doll” that closes things out, a drum-free meditation from Xylouris that starts in somewhat sinister confusion before changing into to a bright, almost banjo-like figure that then just drifts off into the twilight. It’s a mysterious, anticlimactic finale to a puzzling yet compelling album, but at least it leaves you wanting more. — spectrumculture.com


   


Track List:
01 - Second Sister
02 - Latin White
03 - Seeing the Everyday
04 - Missing Heart
05 - Tails of Time
06 - Night Club
07 - Forest in Me
08 - Red Wine
09 - Underworld
10 - Witnessed By Angels
11 - Memories and Souvenirs
12 - Long Doll


Media Report:
Genre: alternative folk
Country: Greece / Australia
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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