It has been over a decade since I, a child of the 80s and clinically depressed man of this century’s early 10s, heard New History Warfare Vol 2: Judges on a train from Berlin to Prague.
As we flowed through Bohemia, not only did Colin Stetson repair the childhood injuries my ears had received at the hands of Kenny G and a sea of over-produced, sax-heavy Stock Aitken and Waterman pop and reconfigure my understanding of a previously hated instrument, but in its inherent complexity, and in the way it somehow matched the gloomy, dramatic landscape, the music, for the first time in what felt like a long time, allowed, or forced me, to forget my troubles and commit wholly to the present. There was the view of the part of the Earth, the music, and nothing else.
But I missed him each time he played Berlin, and each time since in Montreal. So it was with some excitement that I poured myself through the Persian-rugged hallways of New City Gas – for a special session of the Mutek Festival – and up the stairs to finally witness how one man makes all those sounds alone.
A confession/disclaimer: before this gig, I hadn’t listened to the recent singles. I had no knowledge of any releases since last year’s album ‘When We Were That What Wept For The Sea’. So, I’m not entirely sure what the set’s opener was, but I think, having listened to them since, it was one of the singles, ‘The Love It Took To Leave You’, which was the perfect beginning, with its waves of bright, stabbing, high notes and borderline falsetto singing.
If it wasn’t that track, I apologize, but the fact remains that for anyone unfamiliar with Stetson’s recent releases, more familiar with his earlier work, or for those who’d never heard him at all, it would have eased them into the set, and given them the courage to face the onslaught of the night’s second tune, another recent single, ‘The Six’.
It’s an absolute beast. A pagan stomp of furious elephants and hornets with breaks reminiscent of QOTSA ‘Songs for the Deaf’ era riffs. Stetson is silhouetted throughout, backed by a vast screen of burning embers and sparks. To describe it as intense is an understatement.
The following track is the title track from ‘When We Were That What Wept For The Sea’. A tune preceded by a story about his late father, for whom the album was written. Colin had asked him, out fishing on Lake Michigan, what he was thinking about. “Nothing,” his father replied. His son, not believing it was possible to not think of anything, kept pressing his dad who eventually told him that he was merely watching his line, noticing the clouds, the play of light on the water. “A born meditator that man,” says Stetson, and that this track is about that moment.
For me, that moment, that story, is the key to the night, and to Stetson’s work as a whole. Whether the music is more ‘classic-sounding’ Stetson, like ‘When We Were That What Wept For The Sea’ with its euphoric, cascading, looping waves of reverb that call back to earlier albums, or the darker, more percussive new work like ‘The Six’ or the set’s untitled closer, a new track from his upcoming album, which starts as an endless, mesmerizing, monotonous dirge, and morphs into a dance track, presence is at its centre.
Colin Stetson is completely mentally and physically committed to his playing. He wrestles his instrument, producing a thousand layers of music; drums, melodies, harmonies, singing, breathing. It is to watch someone bring their instrument alive, and to live through it. He gasps for air after each piece as if he wouldn’t have managed one more note.
I don’t claim to know what goes on his mind, but I imagine, given the effort it takes to play his compositions, it must be clear in the moment. A clarity that, whether he feels it himself or not, is his gift to us. Enveloped in a sound system so loud, but such high quality that it causes no pain, that Stetson describes as ‘like a church’, I cannot think of anything else, and I doubt that anyone there is anywhere else other than where they are.
Review – Dominic Blewett
Photos – Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
