REVIEW: Papa M, Live from a Shark Cage (Drag City)
- Kerwin So
In Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the main character descends into the darkest recesses of a dried-up well to battle his personal demons. You might think that David Pajo, the man behind the moniker of Papa M, lives in a well himself, knowing some background on his latest musical project. After all, what kind of artist would constantly change his name from M to Aerial M to Papa M, thereby making life hell for record store clerks responsible for alphabetizing the stuff? And who would call his album Live From a Shark Cage even though it was recorded neither live nor from a shark cage? Nevertheless, after his groundbreaking work with bands like Slint and Tortoise throughout the 1990s, Pajo has moved on to create beautiful music for battling personal demons with Aerial M and now, the extraordinary Papa M.
The closest visual image my limited mind could come up with to express this album's simple yet deep majesty is strolling through a vast green park alone, immediately following a heavy rain, when the sun is struggling to break through the clouds and everything is drenched with the heady sense of vitality and potential. There are enough light touches of banjo and guitar body tapping to give this album a pastoral feel along those lines, but for the most part, Live From a Shark Cage is built on splendidly layered guitars and warmly repeating themes that gently but powerfully draw the listener in, body and soul.
To dissect this album song by song is to do it a grave injustice, as it was clearly conceptualized to function as a whole. Yet, nothing here comes across as pretentious or superfluous. The piano tinkling of "Bups" midway through may sound like self-indulgent noisemaking in and of its own, but it works perfectly within the context of breaking the unitary sound of Papa M's lush guitar soundscapes. Moreover it serves as the ideal preface to the oddly moving "Crowd of One," a montage of voice messages culled from the answering machine of a member of the Pajo family named George. Perhaps the most poignant moments of this piece belong to Vinnie, apparently a friend of George who calls several times a day, gently but repeatedly urging him to call him back, giving the distinct impression that George is, in fact, his only friend.
With this thought in our heads we are left to contemplate the album's centerpiece, the epic "I Am Not Lonely With Cricket," a composition threatening to make David Pajo indie rock's Philip Glass with its hypnotic, minimalist repetition and interlocking waves of pulsating harmonics. The pure guitar lines are looped in such a way as to resemble a sort of organic downbeat music, with the plink of the strings filling in the percussion role of that genre's subdued electronic blips, and rendering a future remix all but irrelevant. By the time the extended reprise of the opening track "Arundel" comes around, with its quietly anthemic climax of personal triumph, you are left feeling renewed and ready to emerge from the recesses of that well.
I don't often say this, folks, but there are not enough records like this being made. Tight yet expansive, linear yet elliptical, Live From a Shark Cage is simply superb. Surely it was meant to be listened to in its double-vinyl incarnation, what with its four clearly delineated "sides" (not to mention Slint's legacy of championing vinyl). But any way you pick this album up, listen deeply, and listen often.
