The Northeast is digging out of a major winter storm that dropped a ton of snow on lawns, sidewalks, rooftops, driveways and roads, but all I see when I look out my front door is green grass. For parts of last night and this morning, I’ve been tuned to 6ABC Action News’ weather coverage of our old stomping grounds via Amazon Prime, where a slew of local channels can be accessed, plus consuming pictures and videos from friends and strangers alike. A foot here, a foot here, with some drifts taller than me: It would stagger my mind except for the fact that I’ve been there, done that.
In some respects, the Early’s ambient musings on I Want to Be Ready, the full-length followup to last year’s compelling Cusp EP, conjures a similar weather system pushing across an aural landscape. In essence, a wintry mist transforms into heavy bands of snow. (To borrow a line from Rick Barot’s poem “Capilano,” “Each thing dissolves into something else: the mist drifting like white hair underwater, the weather becoming an ecstasy.”) The pristine calm that follows is beautiful up until exhaust fumes turn it grimy and gray.
The Early (Alex Lewis on guitars and synthesizers; Jake Nussbaum on drums and electronics) must rely on renewable energy, however; no fumes dirty their intricate sonic sculptures. The five-track, 40-minute excursion plays somewhat like one long instrumental, the nominal stops and starts akin to those intra-storm moments when it seems the snow has ended but actually hasn’t. It’s a mesmerizing listen.
It should be mentioned that Lewis and Nussbaum named the album after choreographer-dancer Danielle Goldman’s book of the same name. Goldman explores how improvisation is a form of freedom, but that such freedom requires context and understanding in order to succeed. “A skilled improviser,” she writes, “will be intimately familiar with her habitual ways of moving, as well as the shifting social norms that give those movements meaning. Then, on a moment-to-moment basis, she figures out how to move.” Such applies to improvised music, as well, and in that sense the Early create meaning from their improvised fronts, derechos and supercells. I Want to Be Ready is rough and taut, peaceful and easy, and well worth many plays.
The Old Grey Cat 