Various Artists - Dark Was The Night (4AD)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
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I won't go on any more about the opening track, David Byrne of Talking Heads and the Dirty Projectors' remarkable duet 'Knotty Pine', because I did so at gushing length HERE. I will however say that there are another, what, 25 or so tracks on this album, and in virtue of this song alone, the entirety is already deserving of a solid three out of five. Hear it! Now!
Of course, there are other gems here, but this is also a record worthy of merit for the very reason that it exists - raising money for Red Hot, a charity who do a lot of fantastic work researching the best way to combat that f**king AIDS virus. Everything about purchasing, listening to and owning this compilation will make you feel like a good person. Not only do I not usually give compilations the time of day, but I can't even say that about some of my favourite 'proper' records.
And Dark Was The Night really, really pulls it out of the bag at times - sure, the Byrne/Dirty Pro's collaboration is never toppled from the summit, but Yeasayer give it a damn good go - 'Tightrope' is probably their best song, and they've dedicated it to this bunch. Bear in mind all these tracks, thus far at least, are exclusive to this release - it makes it really worth owning. What's more, only the blaaddy Kronos Quartet gift the record its title track don't they, with a typically atypical indescribable something that can't really pinned to any genre other than 'terrific'. Speaking of genres, it's largely relentlessly indie, the whole thing - we're OK with this of course, but the sheer volume of beardy guitarists and gentle melodies here make Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' 'Inspiration Information', a blast of sultry soul, one of the best things here just because of the startling and welcome difference in tone it represents.
The temptation with compilation reviews is always to name all the tracks in brief with succinct descriptions of why they are great or otherwise, and forgive us, but it's a temptation we're about to give in to. So, elsewhere, Sufjan Stevens' 'You Are The Blood', all ten minutes of the thing, is a real treat - a fascinating insight in to what this indisputable genius of a fellow might come up with next. Far more electronic, expansive, abrasive and all over the damn place than anything he's put out in to the wild before, its remix treatment at the hands of Buck 65 on the second disc also offers pleasures both varied and enlightening. If you miss the old Sufjan, all strings and banjos and less of the bleeps, Andrew Bird does a pretty good impression of him on 'The Giant of Illinois', even down to referencing the state that was the inspiration for Stevens' last album.
It continues that Bon Iver has not as yet written a bad song. In fact, he's only ever written really lovely ones. Justin Vernon, the man behind said project, is on this compilation twice, both times doing that thing where he multi-layers his voice 'til he's achieved the sound of a choir of ghostly castrati, first on his own as Bon Iver and secondly under his birth name with Aaron Dessner of The National. The Bon Iver track's more gorgeous, the Dessner duet's more terrifying - both are fantastic. Aaron's brother Bryce Dessner, also in The National, gets his own duet to concentrate on - his gentle guitar backing leaves vocalist of the moment Antony Hegarty (minus any Johnsons) room to shine in a way that his over-stringing of his most recent record The Crying Light ever really afforded him. Fair enough that they get two of the most interesting people to collaborate with, as well as their own strong full band contribution - we have The National to thank for the fact that this era-defining compilation even exists.
Did we mention yet that The Arcade f**king Fire are on this thing too? Sure, they don't deliver anything particularly revelatory (The New Pornographers arguably pound out their wares with more glee on 'Hey Snow White'), but their 'Lenin' is a great harmonic stomp all the same, and these guys releasing anything new is greeted with such religious fervour by so many that their presence on this track listing is an event in itself.
It's great, OK? Largely, really great. But am I allowed to say anything bad about a record that exists for such a good cause, and has brought together such an amazing array of talent under its banner? Well... to be honest, it is a little one paced. Really sweet tracks like Grizzly Bear's 'Deep Blue Sea' get a little lost in the mire of other admittedly very lovely songs that just sound a little bit too much like it. The heck-a fun home demo feel of Spoon's 'Well Alright' that opens the second disc here gives a false indication that things might be a little pacier in the penultimate half of Dark Was The Night, but it's misleading - this is quite a slow record, and you'll get much more out of it once you become settled with the idea.
Who's ever going to listen to both CDs in a row anyway? There's a lot to get through here, and we suggest taking your time over it, lest highlights like My Morning Jacket's splendidly sax-laden 'El Caporal' fall needlessly by the wayside, just as Kevin Drew's fine 'Love Vs. Porn' does by being stuck right at the end of this mammoth tome. Someone had to take one for the team, I guess. It ended up being a guy who sounds uncannily like Ed Harcourt.
And... well... some bands don't quite raise their game as much as others. The Decemberists for example- here's a band who now make such consistently good concept records that hearing them work outside one sounds a little funny - there's no build up, and nowhere to go. It just sounds content with its lack of ambition, which is a little depressing.
The only other moments that are less than wondrous are when the cover versions crop up - it's amazing that on what is largely a collaborations record there are so few of them (quite a rarity), but still, you can't tell me that The Books' hook up with Jose Gonzalez for a combined take on Nick Drake's 'Cello Song' brings anything new to the original apart from some unnecessary bleeping, My Brightest Diamond's interpretation of 'Feeling Good' isn't an interpretation as such in that it sounds pretty identical to every version you'll have heard other than that love it/hate it/totally loved it when I was a kid but not so bothered now Muse version, and as for Cat Power, yes love, you've a cracking voice, but quit it with the covers already! 'Less Than Amazing Grace', I call her track on this one - that's her told. Yeah.
What's more (and the moaning stops soon), many people are bound to like Dave Sitek's version of 'With A Girl Like You' not because of how it sounds in and of itself but because of the profile of the Mr. Cool who made it. Sgt. Belle and Sebastian Stuart Murdoch is in danger of falling in to the same trap, but his 'Another Saturday' - which completely lifts the tune from 'Wild Mountain Thyme' and makes no apologies for it - is actually thoroughly charming. And in a final almost a cover moment, Conor Oberst is as love him or hate him as ever, though his duet on his own old Bright Eyes weepie 'Lua' with Gillian Welch seems to be splitting even his own fans down the middle as to whether it should ever happened or not. Our opinion? It's as alright as he was, or can be. I just. Don't. Get. It.
So some people play it safe, if not ever particularly bad. It doesn't matter so much when someone like Beirut refrains from pushing the boat out though, because he still sounds like he sails in an ocean all of his own on 'Mimizan', and though slow melancholic guitar music is very much the order of the day, Yo La Tengo's contribution, named 'Gentle Hours', is such a triumph that it must have made every other purveyor of a similar craft on this collection wonder why they never thought to be that bit slower and that bit more melancholic - you know, to really push themselves to the limits of their own gorgeous sadness. Only the hitherto unknown (to me at least) Riceboy Sleeps gives it a shot, with a beguiling eight minutes of ambient drone presumably constructed entirely out of the sound of frozen tears thawing out, called 'Happiness'.
Let not such minor misgivings take away from the feeling I want you to leave this review with - that this is one of the most interesting, important and rewarding compilations of the decade. It's done a very difficult thing in making collaborations not sound like a disjointed mess - look at that hideous recent N.A.S.A. record for an example of how wrong it can all go. Dark Was The Night however has me convinced that a lot more of these collaborations should happen, and at more length - if Alison Krauss and Robert Plant can justify a whole record of duets, why can't Feist and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard? Their 'Train Song' is simplistic escapist beauty in its most uncomplicated form. And why don't Devastations and Blonde Redhead just drop the egos and become the cabaret dirge supergroup that 'When the Road Runs Out' confirms they definitely should? No reason.
The liner notes describe the purpose of this collection better than we can - we're reviewing music, not illnesses. If we were reviewing illnesses, AIDS would definitely get a 0/5. The music here however is a never atrocious, consistently delightful and occasionally spectacular snap shot of where it is alternative music finds itself in 2009. Zeitgeist, consider yourself captured.
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