Long ago, the music industry decreed that no band should make more than one album every two years, and no album should exceed ten to 12 tracks, unless said tracks were very short, in which case, up to 14 were acceptable. That is, if you’re playing along at home, one new song every two months, tops, with penalties for overachievement. But then the music industry died, and here we are. Ryan Walsh, for the last couple of decades the chief creative force behind Hallelujah the Hills, presents a four-part concept album with 54 songs, featuring his core band plus an assortment of New England musical legends. It’s too much to absorb to in one sitting or one day or maybe even one week, given the knotty lyrics and well-constructed melodies, but Walsh is okay with that. Take your time. Pick your favorites. “Warning: There is no correct way to listen to Deck,” Walsh writes in the album’s liner notes. “We created it in a way that encourages play with its elastic, modular nature. This is a story. These are the songs. This is the deck.”
The album is organized into four loosely thematic parts corresponding to the suits of a card deck. Clubs collects the rowdy, rock-show bangers. Hearts showcases Walsh’s quieter, more stripped down, ballad-y side. Diamonds has the richest, fullest, orchestral arrangements. And Spades is a hold-all for the weird stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else. You could listen to any of the four parts as a stand-alone album, but you’re not required to. Walsh even recommends picking 13 cards out of a deck and lining them up with the requisite songs, as a way of making a mix and, incidentally, a form of divination.
As I write this I’m listening to all four albums on shuffle, and the first thing that jumps out is how good Walsh is making songs. Here’s rollicking “Jokes on You,” the two of Diamonds, with its punch of drums, its draping strings, its melancholy trumpet, its ode to creative prolixity. “This wheel’s on fire/Now you’re sayin’ that you’re tired/When everybody taps out/I’m just coming alive,” and yes, grab a power bar. You’re going to need some fuel if you want to keep up.
Now comes a quieter moment, song made of piano chords and emotional complexity, the Jack of Hearts entry called “Something Great.” ”You were trying to do something great/and I may never forgive you,” murmurs Walsh in his rueful, worn-in tenor, sketching the grey areas of ambition and connection and compromise.
The songs are performed by Hallelujah the Hills’ core members, Walsh himself on guitar and lead vocals, drummer Ryan Connelly, violist (he also does the singing saw on lovely, heartsore “Classic of the Genre”) David Michael Curry, Joseph Marrett on bass, Brian Rutledge on trumpet and synth and Nicolas Giadone Ward on various keyboards and guitar. It’s a very good band, solid but imaginative and well used to filling out the textures of Walsh’s melodies. There are guests, too, demonstrating HTH’s longstanding central place in Boston indie culture and Walsh’s large circle of admirers. That’s Sadie Dupuis belting slack rocking “Uncanny Valley” to kick off the Clubs disc, and Craig Finn one song later bolstering the chorus of “Burn this Atlas Down.” Ezra Furman takes lead vocals on the ebullient, resilient “Rebuilding Year,” and again on “This is a Song.” Does the raspy whisper on “I Did My Own Stunts,” sound familiar? Maybe that’s because it’s Mission of Burma’s Clint Conley.
All of which supports the argument that Deck is just too big and various to cover in a normal sized review, but it’s very much worth tackling in bits. If you’ve ever enjoyed Walsh’s clever, hyper-verbal mayhem, you’ll enjoy this. Just make sure you have snacks handy and are wearing comfortable clothes. You’re going to be here for a while.
Episode 580: Vashti Bunyan, Howard Fishman and Ryan Walsh
A special edition of the podcast this week, as we joined by three musicians who have released books.
Howard Fishman’s To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse is available now from Dutton. The book explores the life of converse, who remained largely unknown until her music was reissued in 2009 with the compilation, How Sad, How Lovely.
Vashi Bunyan’s music had its own renaissance around the turn of the millennium, when her album, Just Another Diamond Day was discovered by a new generation of musicians. Her memoir, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live is available now on White Rabbit.
Ryan Walsh is the founder and front man of Boston-based indie band, Hallelujah the Hills. In 2018, Penguin released his Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, which explores the creation of Van Morrison’s seminal album.
Once I lived a whole summer
inside a lemon. Bright bitter skies
and the salt. You had to squint
to make sense of it. Laundry
on the line and words
squeezed from the throat.
And no sugar. No sugar.
Last we caught Marissa Nadler, she was opening for Pallbearer, still touring Strangers. Later that year, she released a compilation album and a couple covers records, but it wasn’t until September that she followed up Strangers. Her latest album, For My Crimes, like July, centers around relationships. But instead of concretely illustrating the dissolution of one, it’s a tribute to them via illustration of how hard they are to keep alive. On the title track, written from the perspective of a death row inmate, she sings, “Please, don’t remember me for my crimes,” instead begging the public to consider her as an observant partner. ( “When we were young, you used to tint your lips / And cheeks red with wine.”) Nadler finds empathy in this character’s memory, because she, too, has had relationships put to the test--and fail--via distance. For instance, “I Can’t Listen To Gene Clark Anymore”, is about the capability for songs to trigger associative memories of people; Sharon Van Etten’s backing vocals provide a fittingly eerie, dreamlike tone to the already wistful track.
Whereas in the past, Nadler’s voice was often obscured by feedback or reverb, here, she’s upfront like she is live. She coos with vibrato like Angel Olsen on “Lover Release Me” and “All Out of Catastrophes” (funny enough, Olsen guests on the title track), and leads an impressive team of players (including harpist Mary Lattimore) on “Are You Really Gonna Move to the South?” She continues to add grungy guitar scrapes to her compositions to give them a rough edge, as on the excellent “Blue Vapor” (which also features harmonies from Dum Dum Girls’ Kristin Kontrol (aka Kristin Welchez), saxophonist Dana Colley, string player Janel Leppin, and none other than Hole’s Patty Schemel on drums). It’s all evidence of her increased level of artistic confidence.
Nadler’s breakup with journalist Ryan Walsh inspired July, and the two eventually got back together and married. But that doesn’t really matter. On For My Crimes, Nadler’s point is more that our firing synapses will always cause us to remember things that make us sad or uncomfortable. On the album’s closer, a dead car makes Nadler remember a relationship gone. “119,657 and the engine blew / 119,657 and I thought of you,” she sings, compressing the last however many years of memories into a single number, amazed by it all.
Singer-songwriter Johanna Warren opens.
Maxwell, Chicago Theatre
As part of his 50 Intimate Nights tour, Maxwell’s debuting new songs! Earlier this year, he released “We Never Saw It Coming” and accompanying music video/short film “The Glass House”, and he re-released his 1998 record Embrya. It gives me hope that we may be able to wait more than what’s lately been the usual 7-8 years between new records.
Parquet Courts, Vic Theatre
We previewed Parquet Courts’ Lollapalooza pre-show at Thalia Hall in August:
“We’ve seen Parquet Courts twice in the past few years: once at Pitchfork after releasing Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea, and once at Metro after releasing Human Performance. Their new record, the excellent Wide Awake!, is their most instrumentally ambitious. Tapping Danger Mouse to produce it, the band aimed to make a punk record you can dance to, but what they really did was make a dance-punk-funk record that’s as explicitly politically charged and pointed as the classics from all three of those genres, ultimately exemplifying the spirit of each.”
New York-via-Colombia Latin rock band Combo Chimbita opens.
Ryan is a board member of Neighborhood Housing Services of Northern Queens, a not for profit organization that helps low to moderate income individuals purchase and sell property.Serving all of New York State.
