The wallpaper is rippled from its age, sagging and pregnant with the water leaking in from above. The window panes are mildewed and cobwebbed, and a dozen insect corpses lie scattered on the sill. They are the victims of the naked bulb that hangs from the ceiling, casting a dull glow on the bed, which vibrates if you put enough quarters in the slot on the headboard. The scent of alcohol snakes through the room like a vine strangling a trellis. The bed's stained sheets cover a mattress that would just as soon swallow you as comfort you to sleep.
This is Simon Joyner's hotel suite. It's not so much a place to live as a place to retreat to, a tattered sanctuary from the withering attacks of the heart on the cortex, and a place to retrieve your body from the floor where it fell in last night's drunken stupor in private. Joyner has lived here for a long time, first emerging from his tired bedsit in 1993 with the Room Temperature album, and following it up with a series of ramshackle folk records that have quietly established him as a lyricist with few equals.
Hotel Lives finds Joyner opening up his box of demons and putting them to rest, one by one. His lyrics are those rare ones that could just as easily read as a book of spectacular poetry, but they're truly brought to life on the album by an impressive cast of collaborators. Not the least of these is producer Michael Krassner, who captures every expression of misery, pain, and redemption with a remarkably adept hand. Virtually every member of the legendary Boxhead Ensemble's new line-up is here; pianist Will Hendricks, drummer Glenn Kotche, and a host of other instrumentalists color cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm's sparse arrangements with painterly strokes.
Though the music on Hotel Lives more often resembles the brooding intensity of early Leonard Cohen, it opens closer to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite," with the carnivalesque swirl of its title track. The subtle electronics, droning cello and martial toms call to mind the work of Truckstop labelmates Pinetop Seven. "Here's another song about an old hotel/ A place you can rise in, the same place you fell/ To get lost in solitude and saved by yourself/ And did I mention I'm alone as well" begins Joyner, immediately setting the tone for all that follows.
The rest of the album's 77 minutes are a lot less musically active, often stretching barebones arrangements over the course of six or seven minutes. And if Hotel Lives fails anywhere, it's in its overwhelming length. Still, despite its epic breadth, there are more than enough breathtakingly intimate moments to keep you from leaving, and further listens reveal infinite layers of subtle feedback, manipulation and countermelody. Lonberg-Holm's arrangements are subtle to the point that you barely notice the warm horns and strings of "Now We Must Face Each Other," but it's hard to imagine the song without those elements.
The song's subject never casts an eye back over his shoulder as he leaves the life of another in shambles. "Why must you turn everything beautiful ugly/ And everything ugly so hideous?" Joyner accuses at the beginning, backed only by a spare acoustic guitar. "Will you ever tire of digesting the flesh/ Long enough to investigate the soul/ Or are you like the amnesiac goldfish/ Always surprised to find yourself in a bowl?" he ends as the arrangement collapses into dust.
Joyner's voice breaks all over the middle of the album, cracking with exhaustion and sorrow at every turn of phrase. This hotel is the same one that Jeff Tweedy wrote "Someone Else's Song" in, the one where Smog had his first conference with death, and the place where Tindersticks used to reside before they discovered 70's soul. Somewhere in the woods behind the parking lot, the Oldham brothers sit around a fire howling and strumming guitars deep into the night.
The atmosphere of "How I Regret That I've Done Wrong" recalls the odd combination of junkyard ambience and traditionalism of Califone, while the loose rhythms and light strumming of "My Life Is Sweet" nudge along a vocal that sometimes resembles the tumbling delivery of vintage Bob Dylan. The song is perfectly placed to break up the brooding atmosphere, though the lyrics don't flinch in their wrenching account of alcoholism: "I got on my hands and on my knees/ And I asked the floor for release/ I was so heavy it felt like I was being squeezed/ Through the cracks in the wood into the black underneath."
"You, David, Maria, & Me" drags itself into bed on the back of a tired slide guitar worthy of David Roback or Rainer Ptacek, incorporating tape noise into the arrangement as well. The junkyard ambience of the second half of the album means that Hotel Lives actually gets better and fuller as it progresses, a technique that allows you to listen to the whole thing at once. Still, it's best digested in two forty-minute pieces, as spending too much time at once in Joyner's room can be somewhat taxing on the nerves.
Time issues aside, though, once you've let Simon Joyner hold you in his poetic grip, you're likely to return for more very soon. And with collaborators like Lonberg-Holm, Guillermo Gregorio, and Krassner on hand, his careful documents of each stumble and insecurity of the transients in his world are fleshed to perfection. "Listen all you lovers and would-be lovers to my tale/ The moral of my story is not hidden/ Though there are some lies along the way to disguise the details/ The broad strokes of this picture shall render its true meaning," he sings on the closer, "Geraldine." When the song is over, you realize he's telling the truth. Joyner's hotel lives may not be ones you'd want to live, but when rendered so skillfully, they're easy to love.
