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Tim Cluff,
Wash
[available by e-mailing
]
Nowadays, the current cache many musicians strive for is that of the "quirky" variety. Perhaps as Austin madman Daniel Johnston's influence works its way through a new generation, and as the pendulum has swung toward the acoustic/folky side, people who might have once picked up a Strat find their arms wrapped lovingly around accordions, or tinkering with obscure stringed instruments, or rosining up a bow. The result in some cases has been brilliance; but more often than not, it's an oblique, stale contrivance.
The latter, thank God, is not the case with Tim Cluff's
Wash
, which may just be the most genuine, smart and understated CD to hit Santa Fe in a long time. Cluff utilizes accordion, piano, acoustic guitar and violin to craft 13 songs that shoot simultaneously to the heart and the brain. But, despite his choice of instruments, Wash is no roots album. Rather, if anything it evokes folk songs, in the same way the Decemberists do, while infusing them with a modern sensibility. "Ladyship," for instance, employs an almost ragtime piano, the bass provided simply by a single baritone voice singing "bum-bum-bum" in time and key with the music, but the melody lifts it straight into the here and now. There's also "Citizen's Lament," a piano/violin-based dirge that sounds as if Neil Young had traveled back to 19th century Ireland: "It seemed so crazy / to have a baby boy," Cluff sings, as the violin floats around him, until the inevitable fate of the baby is revealed, to disturbing effect.
What makes these and the rest of the tracks on Wash so satisfying is their complexity disguised in simplicity. The production is fairly straightforward, but upon listening you become aware of the thought put into each tune; it's a work so deceptively easy to hear, so brightly written, yet so oddly twisted at the same time, it grows clear this is a work of mad genius.
