Eighty-five minutes of material spread across two discs, Say God isn't so much a time commitment as a time eraser. Though it's ostensibly about Christianity-- "Holy Bible Time!" he announces at the outset-- Daniel Higgs' wandering journey is more about mind and spirit than scripture. He's fascinated by how mantras can kill the clock, how obsessively turning over a word or phrase can induce time-defying meditations. When he asks you to "Say God"-- a request he makes about 100 different times during the 11-minute title track-- the point seems less about the word than how often you should repeat it. For Higgs, the answer to the question of "how often" is probably "forever."
If that makes Say God sound like something other than music, well, it is. It's more like metaphysical stand-up comedy, or maybe free-form sermons, centered on Higgs' rambling speech and extemporaneous warbling. He'll pick an idea, vary it, dart around it, and land back on it, over music so minimal and distant you often forget it's there. The opening track, "Hoofprints on the Ceilings of Your Mind", sets that template immediately. Higgs is so obsessed with the title and how many ways he can sing it that he ends up addressing the obsession. "I worked really hard on this song, harder than usual," he confesses. "It sounds corny, but this song became a way of life for me." At the end, after getting re-mesmerized by his own singing, he wakes up again: "Well, now it has begun. I enjoyed the beginning very much!" All this OCD-ish self-hypnosis can be tedious even when it's amusing. But spiritual rituals often require you to endure tedium in order to reach something more profound. In that sense, Higgs' exercises are worth the work.
Besides, even with all the preaching, Say God can be pretty musical. Two straight-up instrumentals are perhaps the album's most moving pieces, especially "Song For Azariah", a mantra made of banjo plucks. But even Higgs' word-centered material is more like music than speech. He turns phrases into riffs and sentences into solos, counterpointing his own ideas like a horn-player reacting to a drummer. Following that progress can put you into weird frames of mind, where everything suddenly seems more profound. When I first listened to the 17-minute track "Root & Bough" on headphones during a subway commute, the section in which Higgs suddenly bursts into electronic drone-- only to cut it off just as abruptly-- lasted exactly as long as my trip up an escalator. I could almost hear Higgs laughing, thrilled that one of his cosmic jokes had found an accidental punch line.
So Say God is funny, exhausting, and sometimes uplifting. Whether it is actually "entertaining" is a chicken/egg question-- do monks enjoy chanting, or the effect it has on their minds? Is a grueling workout fun, or do you remember it that way afterwards? Certainly there are moments here that you can laugh along with, zone out to, or get inspired by. But often at the end of these mental marathons, I find myself less interested in retracing the steps than in recapturing the feelings that result. The pleasure of following Higgs down Say God's shapeless paths lies more in where he takes you than how he gets you there.
