Halfway through David Grubbs’ epic poem The Voice in the Headphones, a micromanaging director Skypes in for a “pep talk,” interrupting the book’s film-scoring protagonist in the middle of a studio session. “I’m going to start calling you the Squanderer so that everyone thinks you have an immense talent,” the director tells the composer. “You’ll thank me for this. If you’re stuck in the Studio Bs of the world it’s not because at one time you weren’t regarded as a serious talent, but because you squandered it.”
The moniker is an odd fit for the renowned, prolific players in Grubbs’ new trio with fellow guitarist-composer Wendy Eisenberg and bassist, producer, and Shimmy-Disc label head Kramer. But their debut album, If a Body Meet a Body, sprouted from a spontaneous squandering session one afternoon in a Studio B somewhere in New York. Recording live, they explored for exploration’s sake, with no stated goal or preconceived theme beyond observing instantaneous collisions of sound and space. And in these “squandered” hours, they tunneled into a collective essence greater than the sum of their considerable parts.
Each of If a Body Meet a Body’s seven “themes” is named for a particular phenomenon, demographic, or setting—airplane vapor trails, soft-spoken cowpokes, at-home viewers, quiet cars. The album starts and ends with the fellow-travelers’ ballad “Theme for Squanderers” and its reprise, both of which operate on uneven ground. Kramer opens these tracks with a low bass note and a higher, watery drone that alternate irregularly as the song’s tonal centers, often disappearing entirely, leaving Grubbs and Eisenberg to fill the negative space in their wakes. In some instances, the two guitarists remain in this suspended state; in others, they touch down with a satisfying two-chord riff that releases the tension for a moment.
This group dynamic prevails throughout, even when the musical dynamics change. On the noisy “Theme for Contrails,” Eisenberg is given room to air out their technical chops. But even in their shreddiest moments, they seem to be listening deeply to Grubbs’ and Kramer’s’ parts. On the much quieter “Theme for Silent Cowboys,” Eisenberg’s technical precision plays off of the wide-open spaces Grubbs loves to create, but it never feels like anyone’s taking a solo.
“Theme for Viewers at Home” is the vital connective tissue between the album’s two distinct halves, crackling at the start with electric fuzz that dampens into distant cable static as the song moves on. Then, cued by a muffled call of “Are we rolling?” at the start of “Theme for Pattern Recognition,” the Squanderers abandon the familiar terrain of locked-in, free-improv jazz. Like the tape-obsessed lead character of The Voice in the Headphones, they’re in peak squandering mode, discarding side A’s tight, comfy feel in favor of eerier airspace. Everything is deconstructed now, and the patterns grow more and more difficult to recognize. “Theme for Quiet Car” is all atonal melodies and extended technique, culminating in a dissonance as taut as an uptuned high E string and as thin as a palm-muted pluck. Even here, though, there’s very little actual silence—striking, considering Squanderers’ patient approach to collaboration. When one guitar fades out, the other slips in. When both disappear, Kramer is close behind with something low and slow.
The neat symmetry of the record, bookended by its twin squanderers’ themes, completes the balancing act Grubbs, Eisenberg, and Kramer achieve across the album. Apparently incongruous melodies that alone might be mistaken for absent-minded noodlings sound like delicate counterpoint when juxtaposed. Tonal and textural shifts can be subtle, but the album rarely stagnates. What we’re left with is not so much a pristine work of collective genius as a testament to the transcendence that can occur when a group of individual geniuses sit down together with no greater aim than melding their minds for a while. If only all our squanderings could be so fruitful.
