Pinpointing Pajo has always been my problem. When explaining your musical lineage to quasi-compelled pals, I'm tempted to scribble flowcharts and draw convoluted figures on oversized sheets of graph paper: thick, black lines are scrawled from Slint to Tortoise to Zwan; little blue streaks shoot from M to M Is the Thirteenth Letter to Ariel M to Papa M; yellow stripes stretch from Mogwai to Matmos; with Will Oldham projects always in red, and written in cursive. Instead, I talk it through with sharp, pointed hand gestures and lots of squinting. Usually, my target stops listening, or fiddles with a cigarette, or just thinks that I'm being weird, and then I get nervous and tacit and play crowd-pleasing Justin Timberlake tracks on my stereo until everyone dances and forgets what we were talking about.
Because David, your elusiveness is exhausting. I spent a night in Louisville once, bowling with my friends: I felt haunted and started looking everywhere for you, nervously scanning the aluminum ball racks for scrappy tufts of black hair, thinking maybe you were crouching there, lurking quietly behind the rows of orange and purple nine-pound balls. I checked the brown plastic tables for your initials, pushing aside scratched pitchers of beer, making sure I had accurately and completely inspected all writable ground for potential evidence. I typed "Pajo" into the scoring computer. Later, I thought maybe you would stop by the Steak and Shake for a strawberry sundae or cheese fries. I stirred a cup of coffee with my index finger, ate a sugar packet, and scanned every single booth: There were no signs. The next morning, I sat mutely in the backseat of a car pointed towards New York City.
Hole of Burning Alms helps, David. All these instrumental singles and B-sides make your sonic trajectory clearer and easier to organize-- when taken together, they chug hard like your career, shifting chronologically from Slint-ish guitar surges to acoustic country hymns to traveling beats to scummy rock songs. Besides, everybody knows that you like singles and EPs better than albums. I get it: Albums are too self-contained, too complicated, too heady. Here you are in bits and pieces. And none of it sounds the same.
"Napoleon" is post-Slint/pre-Pajo-as-vocalist and defiantly haunting, heavy, throbbing, and perpetually somersaulting between quiet parts and loud parts. And David, even though you recorded the song in your basement, it sounds enormous and monumental, like the whole neighborhood must have bowed, bent and quaked every time you crumpled into a chord. There are other people playing, too: bass and drums and an extra guitar. (They are nice.) Remember when you said that "Wedding Song No. 3" was the first and last multi-tracked recording that you ever did with a live band, and you sounded so unhappy about it? From the reversed guitars at the top and the heavy, plodding chords, I think "Wedding" is actually vaguely celestial, all that sound spraying out in one big wave, consistent and thick and glittery.
But in collecting all these pieces of scattered material from throughout your career, you're perhaps sharing too much. I get that "Xmas 1997" was an audio holiday card for Drag City, and therefore sort of private and giggly, but why does it sound so lifeless? I can hear you on the piano and in some of the froggier croaking sounds; the strings and drum machines are chilly, though, like going shopping for presents in a bad mall. I mean, it's pretty, but that basic fade-out is just not like you, David! Still, I wholeheartedly appreciate the absurdity of your sunshine-and-flowers cover of "Turn, Turn, Turn", mostly because it's a completely insane 16 minutes long, has guitar solos, and seems to backhandedly feature someone hitting a saucepan in the background. Plus, you know that we know the words, and you let us sing along instead of stepping up and whispering all the verses yourself.
Before I go, I should tell you: When I first wrote to Drag City asking for a promo to review, I called it House of Burning Alms and never heard back from them. I still feel bad about that, David, because my name is mispronounced all the time and it usually makes me a little sad.
