Loren Connors

All Americans are good at is destroying things. Yeah, take that you, you Yankee doodle dandies. Stick that up your fatty arses and, er…

So I’m not very good at ‘trash talk’ but that’s not the point. I’ve got this theory that art is inherently destructive, that artists have the tendency to behave like driver in a demolition derby. Since America’s founding fathers constructed such a grand political theory the only way was down. The only way was to raze everything to the ground. Some tried to do it piece by piece, some tried it in one detonated gesture.

To look at this another, less xenophobic way, it could be noted that there are two prevailing schools off thought at work, constructive and destructive. What occurs to happen is that it is the destructive one that seemingly has a stranglehold over popular music.

As one generation follows another, styles are passed down hear say. Sounds are re-invented but more frequently than not, destroyed. The movement of cultures can quite frequently be reactionary in relation to a previous movement. Punk can be seen as a protest to what came before it; Postpunk equally so; Synthpop to Grunge etc. The inspiration is often destroyed in order to move on. Despite the great belief that society is improving day by day many don’t feel like they are better off – this mentality is reflected in the sound, that music we listen to is dictated, at least in part, by this concept of destruction and decline. That the only way we can move it forward is to remove all traces of that which has already failed.

To elaborate, destruction is the most important part of creation. Pop music is slowly being destroyed piece by piece, cut by bloody cut. The necessity to pull the plug on popmusic seemed an immediate necessity. It’s an important point in many music fanatic’s life when they wake up and realise that pop music is dead. They can come to this conclusion any number of ways. But it’s not lack of ingenuity that’s killed music. It’s not a failing industry model either. It’s quite simply our cynical minds that’s done it. We kill it every time the pristine entry level consumer concoctions allude us and in our frustration we proclaim its death for the umpteenth time. We are sick of shiny new products of capitalism and we decided that fucking up old cars until they were steel wrecks was the best possible pastime, thank-you America. We decided that we wanted to kill it. It took some doing but we did it.

It’s this penchant for destruction (and murder) that’s driven my love of noise (personal favourites would include Burning Star Core, Shit&Shine and Wolf Eyes). The brutality of noise which can bring all sorts of emotions to the surface, love, anger, frustration, release and more often than not, humour. However its unique feature is that it bares little aesthetic resemblance to traditional, arcane pop music. It has taken all the failings of artists trying to pursue the ‘perfect pop song’ and ensured that they are not used. It is in my mind, the ultimate (or at least most extreme) deconstruction of the classical forms. In its place it constructs the most crude sounds attainable. However, my appetite appears to have been sated, en bref I don’t listen to that shit no mo’. What I’m trying to understand is where do we go now? Or how can we move on from what was designed to be the send off for music?

If we’ve killed it, if the King of Pop is not housed in some cryogenic container, if he is actually decomposing (albeit slowly) in his glass crypt, what is left? One common idea is that we can’t give up the ghost, literally. That once something dies we are haunted by it for eternity. That we find these tormenting spectres calming and nostalgic. That we’ve become so conditioned to these sounds that we couldn’t truly hear anything else, that we’re possibly in denial that our old friend popmusic has passed away. Take La Roux, who I love, for example. Listening to her debut is comparable to being dragged around some synth-laden nostalgia fest by Yvette Fielding. As much as it is synthetic and contrived I just can’t suspend my disbelief enough to agree that it is anything other than sheer brilliance.

My other concocted daydream that I have the audacity to call a theory, is that us the murderous bastards that we are, with blood on our hands are trying to get rid of the rotting corpse that is pop music. I picture ourselves traipsing around wondering what to do. “Holy fuck we’ve killed it” and in all our guilt it becomes personal, ‘I’ve killed it, I did this, I stopped believing. Why oh why?’

It is with this image in mind that I listen to Loren Connors. The experience is an empty one – it is not a full bodied affecting sound like Wolf Eyes say. There are distant memories of old friends, old blues riffs enter and leave amongst the ebb and flow of Connors’ improvising. The songs bring tears rather than joy, trying to lay memories to rest. The pain and the hurt are at the forefront of his imagination.

The PR blurb for The Curse of Midnight Mary goes as such:

In 1981 guitarist Loren Connors took his tape recorder to the graveyard where the legendary Midnight Mary’s grave lies in New Haven, Connecticut. The curse is: Anyone who gets caught in her graveyard past midnight will die the next day. But Connors, like a young fool, taped in that place, making this album.

It would be hard to argue either way as to whether Connors is playing for the ghost of Midnight Mary or or lamenting his own imminent death. With only myself and this stinking corpse traipsing about, the wonder is where’s the music coming from? Who is this singing the old songs, am I not alone in this post-musical apocalypse? Connors it seems, is channeling if not the afterlife then at least the atmosphere.

Connors’ voice can be heard occasionally, hard and heavy, lungs full of fluid and blood unable to breath, merely letting out this groan. His plucking at the strings is crude yet passionate. As if his muscles had started to cease up since the blood had stopped flowing. Recognising the old tunes acts out the process of writing anecdotes for a eulogy. They are obscured by the slack tempo and blurred by the intended alterations. Furthermore his rendition of Amazing Grace may not be the tune we eventually lower our coffins to but one does wonder how many have gone in the ground to the Judy Collins version? It’s not that Connors is dead, he’s not neither in reality nor my imagination. The interesting feature is that we want the music to play on. That the notion of creating a sound to which nothing can follow – as I deem noise to be a strive for – has been advanced, albeit non-chronologically by Connors’ music. As dead as I believe music to be, it seems that I cannot lay it to rest.

Whether this is the eulogy, whether this is the funeral, whether this is heaven or hell, whether this is limbo, Connors has made music for life after its death. Or at least, music for life after noise.