Castanets: Texas Rose, the Thaw and the Beasts

The last time I caught up with Castanets was their (or his if we go straight to the source: Raymond Raposa) 2004 record Cathedral which is where that ‘You Are The Blood’ track came from, the only song I can remember offhand... It’s lying downstairs in a pile with some other records I’ve been thinking about selling for a good while, alongside a few Silver Mt Zion LPs.

It seems right that it’s languishing there in that limbo, an unkempt shrine to my shaky twentieth year, full of songs I once identified and haven’t quite let go of. Albums I have been intending to pass on for longer than the few months I spent spinning and spinning them.

But listening back to it now, beyond that ‘You Are the Blood’ song (which might well have been the Class of Freak Folk’s ‘Where is my Mind’) it’s better than I remembered. It has a real haunt to it, songs like ‘No Light to be Found’ skitter through the night like urban foxes, and others like ‘Three Days, Four Nights’ veer from bathroom-reverb laments to wide open road-country seamlessly. It’s got variety, it’s got lazy strumming, doomy picking, archaic meets modern, urbano mis-shtick… I’m keeping it! Though if I could get the price I paid I wouldn’t. Posterity…?

So this one is cleaner, less of a delta, further out to sea and smoother. Older and bluer. Not without it’s clicks and splurges of fat synth (the frustrating ‘Worn from the Fight (with Fireworks)’), and the odd Constellation worthy crescendo as on ‘No Trouble’ which is similar but better than anything I’ve detected on the new Vic Chesnutt record so far. The song winds to a close with some wonderful wailing saxophone from the other side of the yard, re-iterating Raposa’s deft ability to frame a good song with excellent choices of sound and atmosphere.

So there’s great intros, great outros and a healthy belly full of song bumming around the middle-ground, all strung together in a considered sequence (particularly changes like ‘We Kept Our Kitchen Clean…’ into ‘Down The Line, Love’ into ‘Lucky Old Moon’) but it isn’t for me. Why: same problem as I have with Vic Chesnutt and Wooden Wand/Toth. I can’t get past the voice. Like the other two it comes across a little whiny, and I’m not talking about lyrics here. But it doesn’t have that ugly swing from bullish to bedraggled to Maximus Self-Pityus that afflicts certain others.

But I have respect for his songwriting, it’s strong and by God if we don’t need people like him to keep the Fey Fumblers from total Contemporary Alt-Folk domination.

I can never quite bring myself to skip through a track because you never know when something impressive, forlornly beautiful or slightly unnerving might be about to happen. I’ve frequently been rewarded for my patience. On ‘Down The Line Love’ the horse you’ve been riding, which has so far been amiably cantering you into a swoon rears up and bolts. Not in fear, but in sudden joy. The exuberant wailing solo is more than earned, and executed wonderfully. Cue another gorgeous brass tinged ambient finale.

Then comes the record’s high point, or at least my favourite bit. An aquatic synth pings and later arpeggiates and glistens, a shimmering processed guitar rings out delicately and a light beat tumbles from a drum machine while Raposa waxes and wanes about… well, it goes by the name of ‘Lucky Old Moon’. On ‘My Heart’ he achieves a Bill Callahan like match of tempo and theme resulting in a sweet, black pulsation while the two short instrumental splurges ‘Ignorance is Blues’ and ‘We Kept Our Kitchen Clean…’ not only merit their inclusion but seem essential to the glue that binds this cohesive body of work.

If you’re a dedicated Castanets fan, I take pleasure in telling ye that you can look most definitely forward to this one. Despite all these happy little excursions and cave dives I’m no closer to loving the record myself, but it doesn’t have to snag me to merit a bit of Strange Glue Love.