***JACK O' THE CLOCK'S ALBUM "RARE WEATHER" IS FINISHED! It is available at http://cdbaby.com/cd/jackotheclock, and as a digital download.***
Jack O’ The Clock brings a quietly giddy sort of energy to the possibilities that spring up where American folk songwriting meets experimental music. The group's sound, a jangly mix of concert-hall agility, acoustic rock drive, and junk shop scouring, is characterized by innovative arrangements for combinations of instruments you are not likely to have heard elsewhere made possible by the vastly varied musical experience and multi-instrumentalism of its five members, who have played everything from new music to art metal to fingerstyle folk to free improvisation, sometimes in the same concert. Jack O' The Clock's recordings go beyond the group's live sound to incorporate bits of on-location percussion, found sounds, clandestinely recorded monologues, citynoise, and all manner of insects and birds, as well as a number of guest musicians and singers.
Still, this is a band entranced by and dedicated to songs, which it crafts with resolute attention to voice, melody, and storytelling. You cannot be in a hurry if you want to digest this music: each song demands a certain amount of time and attention to burn its specific place and mood into your mind, though it is not particularly unsmiling or difficult music. These songs are embodiments of the small, magisterial, inane, inspired, and pedestrian voices of everyday people and staticky news reports filtered through a string of sleepless nights. Your weird neighbors and relatives squawking back at you at 5AM.
Some of the songs go on for a while and therefore have to be excerpted here.
NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC features Damon on hammer dulcimer and singing, Emily on violin, Nicci on harp, and Jordan on kitchen-sink percussion.
ALL LAST NIGHT features Nicci playing psaltery and melodica, Emily playing the baritone violin, Damon playing guitar, banjo and singing, and guest vocals by Shauna Jones.
ASPEN is a highly mythologized retelling of a high-profile death. The percussion track is a matrix of yanks, bangs, and whines from a residential construction site. Damon sang and played the instruments.
FIRE AT NOON is a look at an old photo. The song sits on top of fragments of an improvisation by Emily and Damon on the artist Paul Matisse's public installation MUSICAL FENCE. It was recorded near Boston on a snowy night in January.
RARE WEATHER is a monologue set over an improvisation with Emily playing violin, Damon playing wine glasses, and Dave McNally tooting the ARP Odyssey. Damon hammered out the percussion track to I WATCH THE PLANES on a bunch of water pipes and overdubbed the instruments.
