AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #351: AL JOSHUA

A DEBUT GUEST POSTING from SIGISMUND

Circa 2016, thanks to music writer Ran Prieur, I found my way to a cult album from 2009 — heard by few, but disproportionately beloved — Orphans & Vandals’ I am Alive and You are Dead. Ran’s current blurb for the album reads:

“The best of these songs have complex, rambling structure like good prog rock, string arrangements like good chamber rock, and primal beats and chanting vocals like the Velvet Underground — but nothing else that sounds like this can touch this.”

…which sounded enticing to a Floyd/Tull fanatic like myself. What I soon discovered was that the proggy folk-punk epics on the album were also soulful and exploratory like Van Morrison, who has long been one of my all-time favorites, and whose disciples (see also: Daniel Romano, who somehow hasn’t listened much to/hates Van) I’m in constant search of. So: folk + prog + punk (+ chamber rock, which isn’t my thing, but on this album, I’m in) + VU + Van = whoooaaa…

Granted, initially, only a couple of the songs took hold. But they held me hard enough that I started thinking, “Well, it can’t be only these tracks that are insanely awesome, right…? At least, the others should be better than I’ve been giving them credit for.” I spent about a year and a half finding my way into the album as a whole. Then it happened: on a splendidly bright day in late summer, I was wandering the seaside in Macau, watching the birds and the boats and the gleams of sun on the water, and I was listening to Orphans & Vandals, and it hit me: “This is one of the best albums ever made.”

Its cult fanbase agrees. Back around the time it came out, the album garnered several glowing reviews, if generally not from the trendiest publications (though NME, of all things, noticed). The band performed live a lot, and got booed a lot, when pub audiences weren’t open to how openly the songwriter celebrated his sexuality. In interviews, songwriter & frontman Al Joshua mentioned he was already writing songs for a second album. And then —

…and then, that was it. No second album materialized. The band broke up. Frontman Al Joshua maintained a semblance of presence on the Internet, occasionally sharing demos of new songs through Facebook and YouTube. I found the demos intriguing but fairly impenetrable (and, like an idiot, neglected to save the files; I regret it bitterly, now that they’re no longer available), since their tone was so different from the jagged Orphans & Vandals material. That’s on me. If I had listened more, and listened better, I would have realized that the songs Al was sharing were another set of masterpieces in the making.

In 2015 came signs of life in the form of a soundtrack release, for the film Set the Thames on Fire. Al also wrote the screenplay. But the soundtrack was all-instrumental, and I wanted more songs! I continued checking for updates from Al’s social media every now and then, but things seemed quiet.

Later on, Al Joshua disclosed that the nine years which ended up separating the Orphans & Vandals record from his next one were hard years, characterized by illness, poverty, alcoholism, debilitating heartbreak… to some extent, it seems a miracle that he made it out at all.

“I lost somebody I loved and afterwards I simply drifted,” he explained in the liner notes to 2018’s Out of the Blue. “These are some of the songs I wrote as I spun untethered through the years of low-paying jobs and cheap rooms and in and out of other people’s lives.” In an interview, he added, “I never intended for the wilderness years to be so long.”

That release of Out of the Blue went under my radar — as did that of Al’s subsequent album! It wasn’t until one late evening in 2020 that it occurred to me, “Hey, it’s been a while since I checked in on Al Joshua, hasn’t it?” So I did, and I found, yep, two new albums, TWO. From the man who had written I am Alive and You are Dead — TWO NEW ALBUMS! A-and, one was a double! Holy hell! A couple of cups of strong coffee later, I had both new records on my walkman (not kidding: Sony goes on producing portable mp3 players called walkmen) and after my wife was asleep, I lay beside her in our little bedroom, in the dark, with our cat Khonsu curled up and dozing nearby, I slipped in earphones — and began with that double album from late 2018, Out of the Blue.

The first song was a shortened version of Johnathan, which I remember listening to the 11-minute demo of back in the day. The studio arrangement wasn’t rock at all, or even particularly reminiscent of folk, it was something hazier, more luxuriant, a whole lot more jazzy, in a Parisian cafe sort of way… so that was curious, and new. The voice, though — the voice I recognized and hung on every intonation of.

The second track was Judd Street, a dark vision of past love, which features this marvelous, patient verse: “We drank from stolen / milk bottles taken / from neighbors’ doorsteps / early in the morning, / when the puddles are frozen / and the mist is still hanging / over winter gardens / ruined by the season.” And the third was Love You Madly, which broke through whatever remained of the skepticism and distance I had armed myself with for fear of disappointment: here were absolutely beautiful melodies, lyrics that gave me chills, and a development of my favorite spiritual/ecstatic strain from the Orphans & Vandals record, the strain that used to make me think of Van Morrison and which now, and thenceforth — since it has been honed into something singular — makes me think only of Al.

Again, it wasn’t that I fell for every song on the album on first listen; but I did fall for several, and being an album kind of guy, I didn’t clip out the songs I loved and fit them into a playlist, I kept going back to the whole thing, because who knows, what if the other songs blossomed? Sure enough, they did. Today, Out of the Blue is one of my ten favorite albums by anybody.

2020’s Anomalous Events, the second Al Joshua album I dove into that late night, was less forthcoming, though it too, like I am Alive and You Are Dead, is now in my top 20 or top 25. It was a lo fi release, out of necessity; Al was at home, in lockdown, and wanted to make new music, but didn’t have the equipment, so: smartphone. You can hear the cars and trucks rolling by outside his window. It was also almost wholly acapella. But the lyrics were fascinating, and since by then I had come to feel that the only singer whose phrasing could compare to Al Joshua’s was the very emperor of phrasing, Bob Dylan, an album in which the sole instrumentation was Al’s voice wasn’t exactly a turn-off.

Al has described the album as made up of “strange acapella songs … out of an ancient seam. I didn’t know if I was writing about the times now, the past, myself or just stories. [Anomalous Events] is not attempting to make you like it and it has no interest in comforting you. It comes not with peace but a sword.”

This past February, Al Joshua released Skeletons at the Feast, his fourth full-length. It’s a double album once again (I love double albums) and features Al fronting a folk-rock band for the first time since 2009. It’s the album I’ve listened to more than any other this year. It adds several all-time classics to the catalogue, and hints at new directions its maker might take. In Al’s words, it’s “folksy, rootsy, bluesy … Lots of bright yellows and green and primary colors … I wanted a record that sounds human, raw, rough, full of the real ragged joy of playing music, glad to accept errors and happy accidents. I believe I got that. As to what the album is about, I think it’s about the bitter laughter of tears, waking up on the bridge in the red dawn and knowing you have somehow survived the long night, hungry and battered but alive.”

A while after the new album came out, Al wiped his Internet presence completely — no Facebook or Instagram now, just the music itself. Hopefully the reason is not that he intends to vanish again, but that he’s too busy fashioning his soul and too busy making art (is there a difference?) to give heed to the noise of the Internet.

Here and there behind the noise, however, are good spots like this one; and so here, good readers, is an ICA.

Like I said, I’m an albums guy. But there’s power in a good starter collection. So here’s an album-esque introduction (“album-esque,” in the sense that the sequencing took some work) to a catalogue in which each of the four constituent albums is fantastic. Once you’re hooked, they’re all required listening.

Al’s best songs are long, which makes my ICA more of an “LP1” and “LP2” affair than JC’s traditional “Side 1” and “Side 2.” The first disc showcases the first and fourth albums — the ones with a band. The second disc is the lonelier one, featuring the sparser material from Out of the Blue and a closer from Anomalous Events.

LP1 (35:01)
1. Mysterious Skin
2. Laurel and Hardy
3. Liquor on Sunday
4. Let My Body Sing
5. I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down

LP2 (39:27)
6. Good Times
7. Souvenirs
8. Peacocks
9. Skinned Alive
10. A Bird Flew In

LP1

1. Mysterious Skin,  from I Am Alive and You Are Dead (2009).

In his Clash ICA, JC said: “You’ve got to open any imaginary compilation album with a killer tune…something of an anthem which epitomizes the band or singer being featured….and I can’t think of anything better than this.” I expect this song served as the gateway track for the majority of Al’s cult following. I’ve been losing myself in it for seven years and there are still things in the lyrics I haven’t figured out. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I realized the “you” throughout (or, one of the “yous” throughout) is Rimbaud. I remain unsure why, at the end, “violence won’t be far behind,” or what kind of violence the singer has in mind. I do know that the song is joy incarnate. It’s the most resplendently happy and hopeful song I’ve ever heard. At the same time, it’s sorrowful, it’s graphic, it has room for a joke… what would joy mean, after all, if it didn’t take the wider world into account? The song looks all around — at death, sex, passion, emptiness, panic, claustrophobia, love — and refuses to flinch. (Great arrangement detail: the way the vocals are like a duet with the drums.)

2. Laurel and Hardy,  from Skeletons at the Feast (2023).

My favorites in Al’s catalogue are all on the ruminative side, but he’s got this wilder, more punkish streak in him too, and I’d be remiss not to highlight it. A vivid opening verse paves the way for that beautiful chorus (“my heart is as big as a ship / God willing, we’ll all sail away on it”), which gives way to an alternate chorus, only to careen into a steamrolling second verse, and then off to a curious succession of more choruses and alternate choruses and near-reggae bridges. You know how there are drumbeats you default to as soon as your hands meet a sturdy surface (for me, Heart-Shaped Box and Pain of Salvation‘s If This is the End)? Ever since Skeletons at the Feast came out, “I was watching Laurel and Hardy” as Al sings it in the outro is what my brain fills the void with whenever it slides into “idle.” (Great arrangement detail: the band throwing the song back into its former shape after “it was soooo fuuuunnnyyyy.”)

3. Liquor on Sunday,  from I am Alive and You are Dead (2009).

Again — this arrangement!!! Orphans & Vandals were a wonderful band: Al on guitar and lead vocals, a guy named Raven on bass, and three women — Francesca, Quinta, and Gabi — making short work of the rest. This is a tender, defiant, and sore-hearted song, with one of my very favorite basslines in recorded music (or… bassmountains? Dare we call what Raven plays a mere “line” ?). And the flurry of handclap percussion at the end! From how Al sings of the old men “singing songs about their regiment,” you’d think they’re rehearsing some ageless and profound mystery — something incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly sad, and despite that, a worthy target for the singer’s scorn. (Great arrangement detail: bassmountain.)

4. Let My Body Sing,  from Skeletons at the Feast (2023).

Four open notes in standard tuning on the ukulele herald eight minutes of darkness that sound like something Michael Gira would have put out on his Young God Records label circa 2007. This song scared the hell out of me on first few listens — “Whose dark dreams were these? Whose hands? Whose deeds? Whose dark mills and factories? Whose plaintive pleas on bended knees? NOT MINE.” Or — “Finally awake… this time, really, truly, COMPLETELY AWAKE,” implying god knows how many times that he hadn’t been. But it’s a hopeful song. The darkness was real enough, god knows — but so is the renewal, the rebirth, the understanding: “On this thing — THIS taut and trembling string — the whole universe depends.” (Great arrangement detail: the particularly Young Godian breakdown that accompanies Al delivering the song title. How is Thor Harris not playing?!)

5. I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down,  from Skeletons at the Feast (2023).

This closes LP1 of Skeletons, as it closes “LP1” of this ICA. Never before has a song made me think, “Sure, that would’ve fit right on Saint Dominic’s Preview.” The lyrics are simple, limpid — actually, not that simple — I understand the narrator being unhappy about the coming of the night, and the rain over the city, but the rainbow?! The lyrics seem to be the thoughts of somebody who believes himself as good as dead, and who doesn’t want to be called back to the pain and beauty of the world, but that’s exactly what the rainbow is asking of him, and what every sunset, and every gray evening of rain, and even the bedraggled laundry on the clothesline are asking of him — like the various speakers in Leonard Cohen‘s Night Comes On: “Come back, back to the world.” Fanciful interpretations aside, do you know of a better ode to sunsets? Or to walking around town? (Great arrangement detail: the electric guitar riff at 2:51 and the harmonica solo Al follows it with.)

LP2

6. Good Times,  from Out of the Blue (2018).

The “good times” are clearly not those of Mysterious Skin or Liquor on Sunday anymore — they’re wholly conjectural — none of what he sings about may happen — in fact, it almost certainly won’t — there shall be no Dance of the Rose — and who cares, that lonesome but jaunty piano part seems to ask, there’s richness enough in memory and imagination, isn’t there? (Great arrangement detail: the Dance of the Rose.)

7. Souvenirs,  from Out of the Blue (2018).

My favorite Al Joshua song. Also would make my list of ten favorite songs, period. Also has my favorite metaphor in music (the bit about the anchor, but the subway train and the Golden Vanity come close, so I guess that’s three of my favorite metaphors in song, all in one song). It’s unfair, Al, you know, some of us… but then, who among us, who anywhere, can write a song like this? If we could, wouldn’t we do it all the time? I could start to list some of the things that make the song mean as much to me as it does but ultimately, I think, the less you know going in, the better. That Souvenirs is preceded by Good Times on the original album just as it is on this ICA is all the advance knowledge you need. (Great arrangement detail: sorry, no spoilers.)

8. Peacocks,  from Out of the Blue (2018).

Memories of childhood, cherished and sung many years and an untold volume of sorrow later. Another of the most beautiful metaphors ever put into a lyric brings this song to a close. If you’re wondering why tracks 6-8 of this ICA flow so well, it’s because they appear in the same sequence on the album I’ve plucked them from. This particular song was finished the year after Al’s first album came out — there’s this beautiful rendition of Al playing his new song solo at the piano in 2010, filmed by Orphans & Vandals’ drummer Gabi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri1KrzNjtLU) — but it needed to wait eight years to appear on a record. (Great arrangement detail: the trumpet harmonies that accompany Al on the last word of each verse.)

9. Skinned Alive,  from Out of the Blue (2018).

Al’s own favorite of his songs. The instrumentation is voice, acoustic guitar, and the echoes off the studio walls. That’s an exhaustive list. I can’t think of a song more truthful, poetic, and intimate. Now let me tell you something: the first time I heard Out of the Blue, in a pitch-black room in the middle of the night, heavy curtains closed against the streetlights, Skinned Alive and Souvenirs moved me so profoundly that I had an out-of-body experience. Well, two: one per song. If this sounds like the usual dumb smitten-music-writer hyperbole, allow me to protest: it’s an honest attempt to describe the sensation! It certainly didn’t feel the way lying in bed late at night listening to amazing music usually feels. It was more like my whole being got compacted into an orb, or a wicker ball, and then: there was the ball, and there I was outside or beside it, every speck of my spirit attending Al’s breath and words and guitar or piano notes. It was surreal and wonderful and not so far out of my body that it stopped me from crying. I’m not saying you’re going to have a comparable response to either song. But if, on first listen, this or Souvenirs pass you by as just “pleasant” or “interesting,” come back to them, and give them your full attention when you do, and then come back to them with equal attention a few more times after that, and see how you feel when you’re hearing the songs properly for the seventh or eighth time. (Great arrangement detail: the bitter “No!” after “And you think you’ve had enough of hurting others and yourself?”)

10. A Bird Flew In,  from Anomalous Events (2020).

I close with the closer of Al’s third and strangest album — the least apologetic in a discography that doesn’t exactly pander to anyone. In a couple of meaningful ways, Anomalous Events is not unlike John Wesley Harding, but in most ways, it’s probably like nothing you’re used to hearing. It doesn’t relinquish its secrets easily, and the secrets are many, and their mystery and darkness a marvel to behold and to play at unraveling. I tried to get two or three Anomalous Events songs onto this ICA, but the album defies such cherry-picking; the songs won’t appear alongside anything but themselves, in Al’s chosen order. So here I offer just this one sudden, maybe jarring preview. “My true love and I were escaping,” it begins. “It was either dawn or dusk but the gray sky hung over a country lane.” Pay attention to the two distinct appearances of the song title — the first literal, the second rather less so. (Great arrangement detail: the beauty of the two descending notes that each main/preliminary line of melody ends with — “[country] lane,” “[can’t remember] which,” etc.)

Sigismund