Gibberish That Breeds Gibberish
The Lowest Pair take their name from a John Hartford lyric
which is a playful corruption of The Lord’s
Prayer, along with other such from his album Mark Twang [getting the drift?], but their banjo-led Americana and
dual vocal is no parody. The twang here is in the country leanings, and the
voice of Kendl Winter which is, I’m sure, an authentic lilt from her Arkansas
roots. I will return to this.
This type of male/female duo roots music is an increasingly
popular genre, and this album The Sacred Heart Sessions is a fine enough
example. I like opener Ruben’s Fortune
where other half Palmer T Lee’s vocalisation of ‘Ruben’ enters the song in the
inimitable tone of a freight train – itself playful, but here not as some
clever linguistic gest. Second Howl
is again an effective duet, the banjo lead a strong one, and the shared vocal
perfectly pitched.
Third Rosie,
however, introduces that vocal bugbear that so vexes me: a slurred affectation
of sound that I cannot understand as a fashion, and it does not serve Winter
well at all. Not at all. I find it quite obnoxious.
Fourth, suitably if overstatedly titled Fourth’s a Charmer, retrieves the aural appreciation somewhat, with
Lee taking lead on an upbeat stomp of sorts, the vocal affectations here
sung for fun rather than an assumed emotive impact. And the album continues at
this mixed if genre-tight range.
And this wasn’t even my main reason for writing. When
researching the band name and the Hartford link, it reminded me of my own
childhood corruption of The Lord’s Prayer,
an anecdote I have told before, though not here. When I was a very young boy my
father would lead the family each night in a collective rendition of The Lord’s Prayer, a familial gathering
reflecting tradition rather than any meaningful act of worship. It never occurred
to me at the time, and no one drew this to my attention then – the routine usurping
any sense of commitment or meaningfulness, though I suspect at that age I personally
harboured that classic sense of fear which nurtures belief – and it was some
years later that I realised part of my rendition was gibberish, the foshadye before I wake not some biblical
semantics based on an ancient language, but the mishearing and regurgitation of
that gibberish for what should have been if
I should die….
Meaninglessness fostering meaninglessness. I accept Hartford
made this a more comic kind of gibberish.
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