Barbarisms’ new album, ‘West in the Head’ is a destination record, and each song details the frame of mind it took to get there. This unspecific ‘there’ is a place put to question by rediscovering the near at hand. The title comes from a William H Gass’s essay, where he paraphrases Gertrude Stein’s reading of American Expansionism and how the American Modernists ended up in Paris. This paraphrase gets repurposed on Barbarisms’ political-dadaist romp, ‘Freewheeling Through The Old World’: “When you reach the Pacific, there’s no place left but West in the Head.”
For most of his adult life, Barbarisms’ American songwriter, Nicholas Faraone has been living in Europe. After a couple of years performing solo among the anti-folk scene in Paris, he landed in Stockholm where he met Tom Skantze and Robin Af Ekenstam. The two Swedes, who had been performing in tight and technical pop and post-punk bands found themselves adapting to a songwriter who didn’t know which rules he was or wasn’t breaking. They worked like fine tailors, learning to fit suits onto a guy on the run.
Barbarisms’ self-titled debut, indulged all the band’s many eccentricities as nonchalantly as folding napkins. The record was recorded with little to no expectation of finding sympathetic listeners during a rough period in their personal lives. Faraone was finally receiving treatment for what had been a mysterious nerve disease, while Af Ekenstam was dealing with the much more pressing issue of a cancerous tumor that required the amputation of his elbow. On release, it became apparent that a modest yet passionate audience was willing to seek them out.
Second album ‘Browser’ was a more streamlined effort, where song craft wove their idiosyncrasies through their own blend of 90’s college rock and Americana. Touring throughout UK & Europe, they shared the stage with acts like Destroyer, Timber Timbre, The Burning Hell, Micha P Hinson, The Shout Out Louds, and studio-mates Alice Boman and Small Feet.
Barbarisms’ third offering, ‘West In The Head’ is as rich in melodic warmth as it is brutal in emotional suggestion. It smooths out some of the jagged edges of earlier recordings without losing the weirdness and spontaneity of first takes and fortunate mistakes. The songs use the colors of 70’s singer-songwriter-sunshine to illuminate the dark, grimy and often banal details that go into a life dedicated to writing. The narratives poke fun at traditional tortured artists’ stories by toying with the language of romantic poetry, adventure stories, spy novels, corporate slang and newspeak, while the music continually plays into and against expectations of genre. Skantze and Af Ekenstam used their experience as studio engineers to rig the band’s 16th century cabin into a place where songs could be recorded within the day they were written, and their experience as composers emerges in the vivid atmosphere of the band’s deceptively simple music and their demandingly raw approach. This went a long way in allowing the songs to swagger in their lush bare bones.
credits
released June 1, 2018
Barbarisms is Nicholas Faraone, Tom Skantze, Robin Af Ekenstam
Lyrics by Faraone
Music by Barbarisms
Album Art by Jan Håfström
Graphic Design: Patric Leo
P&C Barbarisms 2018 under exlcusive license to Devil Duck Records & A Modest Proposal Records & Human Music Group
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