Tim Cluff
Ordinary Torches
Recently, a very long, New York Times story covering the new "Freak Folk" phenomenon made, among other things, an inadvertent point: The people who make up this scene-a second wave of introspective, weird, quiet folk music that is an extension of the '60s genre-may be talented, smart, communal and ingenious, but many of them are also smarmy, self-centered, self-referential and insular. Devendra Barnhart and his ilk may have quietly produced some of the most intriguing, excellent music of our day, but much of it is overshadowed by a cloudy atmosphere of cultish pretension.
Fortunately for Santa Fe, Tim Cluff reaches the same heights of intelligence and craft as his more well-known brethren, but Cluff is not weighed down by an ounce of snootiness. His new disc,
Ordinary Torches
, is a treatise on what can happen when a supremely talented bedroom (or in this case, bathroom: Cluff has been known to record in the acoustic-friendly confines of the WC) musician doesn't bother thinking about what he's doing, but rather just does it. As
Torches
switches back and forth between toe-tappers and almost-dirges, the clarity of the bare-bones songs-usually acoustic guitar, hand claps, occasional harmonies and traditional instruments thrown in here and there-proves viscerally engaging and accessible. And also damn beautiful, its melodies traveling down roads not often traveled in folk/traditional circuits.
This is a serious album, but that is not to say it is joyless by any means. It's just that even the moments of spry expression eschew mindless happiness; rather, they rely on odd, interesting lyricism coupled with traditional musicianship. The upbeat, "She Watching Rain Parades," for instance, contains the lyric, "I was leaning on a lesbian, looking like hell/Feeling she was fished up outta the well" as an almost ragtime piano skips along behind it. "She" embodies the rest of the album: a strange invented world, but a realistic one.
With
Torches
, comparisons can be made, sure, to every one from Neutral Milk Hotel to Neil Young. Apt as they are, Tim Cluff shoots beyond his connections to other traditions; he is, on his own, one of Santa Fe's best secrets.
