The Wringing Cloth is the fourth and final long-player from the New England based Old Saw. Led by Henry Birdsey the players on this record number 8 in total, and together they make an, I suppose, experimental music that hits like Robbie Basho meeting Cale, Conrad, MacLise, Young and Zazeela’s Day Of Niagara. A blurring of hypnotic drones, folk and Americana, featuring banjo, fiddle, harmonium and pedal steel. Other reference points would be Set Fire To Flames, Raymond Richards’ The Lost Art Of Wandering, and God Speed You Black Emperor. With the assembled strings approximating an acoustic Blue Grass rendition of Steve Reich’s counterpoint and minimalism. Their flow mimicking and Appalachian mountain stream. 

On the longer pieces, suggestions of traditional songs and melodies threaten to break through. The beautiful Lacustrina, for example, had me thinking I could hear the picking riffing on Beck’s take of Daniel Johnston’s True Love Will Find You In The End. As if it were an extended, avant ambient remix of that broken-hearted classic. Amidst the buzzing, the plucked notes and chord changes in places recalling Mr. Hanson’s transformation of Johnston’s romantic outsider anthem into a show of guitar dexterity. The results a little like Animal Collective’s wonky, woozy, Visiting Friends. 

Here I’ll add a late night aside, that “True Love…” is a tune I’ve long been obsessed with. I’m always on the look out for new cover, and Beck’s arrived on red vinyl for Valentine’s Day. Maybe that’s why I had it in my head. 

While Johnston’s nursery rhyme simplicity and honesty will cut anybody to the core, the song seems like an appropriate theme for someone who ended up 6000 miles from home, alone. Old now, it stirs up the same sensations / emotions that I got watching that staggering / breathtaking  Joel Edgerton scene in Clint Bentley’s adaptation of  Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams: 

“Sometimes it feels like the sadness will just eat me alive… but sometimes it just feels like it happened to somebody else.”

However, I have always found Johnston’s 2 minute ballad hopeful. Its message, don’t give up. 

Someone recently asked me what I’d like played at my funeral, and perhaps, tonight, this minute past midnight at least, it’s this.*

*They banned me from picking “It’s Raining Men”. 

Old Saw’s The Wringing Cloth can be ordered directly from Lobby Art Editions.