I can’t really describe how excited I am to see this. Jacbon Bannon is a bit of a hero and an inspiration of mine to get this kind of insight into him is something I find pretty special. The documentary was directed by Ian MacFarland.
I can’t really do describing the whole thing justice so instead here’s the press release:
‘Rungs in a Ladder” is the latest short form documentary by production team McFarland and Pecci. A meditation on life, art, and purpose, the film centers around Jacob Bannon, an accomplished visual artist and frontman for hardcore band Converge, a group that has been carving its own iconoclastic path through the extreme music landscape for over twenty years. Bannon reflects on the formative events in his life as well as his continuing commitment to creation rather than destruction. A commitment that, he explains, is informed as much by anger as it is by survival. The documentary is a single continuous thought that sprawls in multiple directions but ultimately culminates in a sobering and uplifting statement of purpose.
Directed by Ian McFarland, “Rungs in the Ladder” is the latest in an ongoing series of documentaries by McFarland and Pecci profiling people carving a meaningful existence for themselves on the fringes of society’
Seriously this is something you NEED to watch if you’re in anyway a creative and passionate being. It’ll no doubt be an education. The documentary debuts on Noisey on Jan 22nd.
Click here to ‘like’ Converge on Facebook and here to like J.Bannon.
Split releases are enjoying a wonderful resurgence in the underground and alternative music scene these days. As is vinyl. Both of these are good and exciting things, returning a sense of creativity, uniqueness and artistic sensibilties to a scene that had threatened only half a decade ago of forgetting the value of physical art. As such being lucky enough to lay my hand on the vinyl version of this 7″ split is a pretty big deal to me (although as you can no doubt tell from the embed above it is also available digitally). I’ll be the first to admit that being a huge Converge fan, and a huge admirer of all of Jacbob Bannon’s work I was more than a little intrigued as to how his solo work would sound and as such that is pretty much the sole reason I bought this. However, it has also introduced me to Ben Chisholm of Chelsea Wolfe (Who goes by Relevator on this EP) , who I was previously entirely unaware of , but I am now entirely intrigued by. That I was able to write that there proves the value of these kind of releases that I mentioned earlier.
Jacbon Bannon’s, or Wear Your Wounds if you prefer, contribution to the EP ‘Adrift in You’ is nothing like his musical day job. Except for its sense of intensity and darkness. But this a calm piece of music composed a delicate and simple building dynamic. There’s no tortured screaming of full throttle aggression here and the track goes someway towards displaying that Bannon may be a more diverse vocalist that anyone may previously have guessed. It’s simply a shame the vocals sit so low in the mix, as it seems this lower and more restrained approach suits Bannon’s natural singing voice much more than his use of singing within in the musical style Converge. That is, at least from a traditional and more conservative musical approach anyway. The driving percussion in the song is almost reminiscent of the typical climaxes of post-rock songs but very few post-rock acts ever achieve anything close to this almost Nick Cave-esque sense of atmosphere. It’s very much a soundscape piece than a song with layers of subtle electronics and massive guitars blurring together with no obvious hooks or repeating sections. Given the simple dynamic of the song it says something that its reasonable five minute plus length doesn’t seem in the least bit tedious. If anything I was surprised by how short it seemed to be. That’s just how fully immersed I became in the piece. It’s intriguing to see such a different side to Bannon musically and hopefully its not the last.
‘Net of Gems’ by Revelator makes up the other half of the split and is similar in theme to ‘Adrift in You’ but a much more traditional musical piece lead as it is by delicate and beautiful piano and haunting vocal harmonies. At points the arrangement and mix reminds me you of the very darkest moments of Pink Floyd, but lacking the near theatrical grandiose of their releases. ‘Net of Gems’ is much more intimate and contained. The other comparison it brings to mind is Tom Waits, if he was stripped of his penchant for unusual instrumentation and plunged into the deepest depths of melancholy. The songs pay off is ultimately entirely teasing at hints at a build to a more chaotic end in simply…well, ends. It’s a great track, perhaps not as immediate an experience as ‘Adrift in You’ but certainly one that reaps its rewards across repeated listens.
The Split 7″ is available now from the Wear Your Wounds bandcamp and on Converge’s current European/Uk tour.
Here runs the first in what will hopefully be a continuing series taking a closer look at the lyrics of some of the key tracks by our favorite artists here at Post-Blog As…We’ll examine them from an academic angle, an emotional angle, a musical angel and any other angle that is appropriate, or indeed inappropriate. Where we can we hope to bring others into the mix as well to comment.
We should make it clear, that any all of these features we speak only of our own interpretations of the artists work. We’re not saying what we get from the lyrics is what the song is actually about or that the techniques used were used for the reasons we think they were. If you’ve other ideas please feel free to share them. Just don’t attack us for ‘getting it wrong’ when we never claimed to ‘get it right’ in the first place.
So since this is a test drive we went for an easy one…Only kidding. We went for one of the fucking big daddys of lyrical prowess and impact: ‘Jane Doe’ taken from the album of the same name by Converge.
Converge ‘Jane Doe’- Lyrics by Jacbon Bannon
These floods of you are unforgiving Pushing passed me spilling through the banks And I fall Faster than light and faster than time That’s how memory works At least in the dark where I’m searching for meaning When I’m just searching for something I want out Out of every awkward day Out of every tongue-tied loss I want out Out of the burdening night sweats Out of the rising seas of blood Lost in you like saturday nights Searching the streets with bedroom eyes Just dying to be saved Run on girl, run on
‘The album’s lyrical themes were born out of a dissolving relationship and the emotional fallout from that experience’ – J. Bannon
At the risk of this feature becoming incredibly self involved at the very first juncture I’ll just cover this is quickly and clearly as I can: I can entirely relate to that above quote and I used ‘Jane Doe’ as a very cathartic crutch during those times. Which is part of the wonderful nature or lyrics, poetry, music or any art really.
The sentiment of the song could almost be summed up by the first line:
‘These floods of you are unforgiving’
You don’t need any kind of grounding in English from an academic standpoint to grasp the symbolism here. Floods are as we are all aware a dangerous, terrible and powerful thing. I imagine most of us would agree that relationships, or just the idea of ‘love’ is equally as capable of being those things, in particular when it is warped by the strains of reality. The reference to forgiving I tend to look at as an acknowledgement of the kind of intimacy that love provides. Very little is more intimate than true for forgiveness from those you love. To have that love be unforgiving and to have it be so with all the power of a flood is a dark and crushing idea. Exactly the kind of idea I imagine Bannon is referencing when he uses the phrase ’emotional fall out’.
Despite its darkly poetic star, musically much of the first verse of the song is lost in Bannon’s caustic vocal delivery. It’s a genuine example of someone delivering a performance that truly matches the sentiment of the lyrics. It’s near indecipherable nature makes the lyrics difficult to understand from listening to the song, and yet somehow upon reading them they seem enhanced by this lack of distinction. Or at least that is the effect they have for me. I can well imagine for many this isn’t the case, but presumably given the critical acclaim this album and song have won over the years at least a few agree with me.
However, the song does break into more melodic moments. The repeatedly sung refrain of ‘I want out’ is wonderfully simple. From a musical stand point there it can obviously be argued that Bannon is the not the strongest melodic vocalist, but again his voice rings true with utter conviction. Sometimes the best vocalists are the ones you can feel and not the ones you can hear. If that makes sense. It quite probably doesn’t. But that repeating howl of Bannon’s throughout the song surely does. If you’ve locked into the vibe of the song, or indeed the album, by this stage its a beautifully direct statement that stands in direct contrast to the complex rage of the verse lyrics.
The idea of freedom from the crippling nature of the emotional remains of a dying relationship are explored in the latter part of the song’s verses. We’re presented with:
‘Out of every awkward day Out of every tongue-tied loss I want out Out of the burdening night sweats Out of the rising seas of blood’
I’m sure I don’t need to further clarify my freedom point here, ‘Out of every…’ repeatedly spells that out for you. What I do love is the dichotomy of the simple and almost day-to-day use of ‘awkward’ combined with the more poetic imagery of ‘tongue tied loss’. It’s those little dynamic touches that make the lyrics to this song so compelling to me. It evokes the images of those awkward moments and the loss of words as much as it evokes the feelings of those terrible moments. That on the second run of ‘out of…’ lines we get more the violent and abstract imagery of night sweats and seas of blood shows a certain amount of escalation in feeling. That kind of intensified and exaggerated escalation so perfectly mirrors how all-consuming the collapse of a relationship can be. And that can then become an incredibly self-destructive thing. It’s not angst, its genuinely frightening and intense stuff. Individually the images here are striking, but its their combination of this section of the song that is truly compelling upon reflection.
‘Lost in you like saturday nights Searching the streets with bedroom eyes Just dying to be saved Run on girl, run on’
The final lyrical sections of the song ring almost philosophical to my ears. There’s a sense of understanding and a certain amount of acceptance to the reflections here. There’s also clearly a whole world of pain hanging like a shadow over those ideas. The obvious sexual and intimate connotations of ‘bedroom eyes’ and ‘lost in you’ ring with a certain sense of melancholic memory but the reference to ‘Saturday nights’ and obviously ‘dying to be saved’ present a sense of present. Saturday is always coming, much like death.Not necessarily like salvation. Whether you want to view the Saturday night reference combined with bedroom eyes as reference to weekend flirtation and promiscuity and then by extension an idea of cheating and trivialisation is entirely up to yourself. That I tend to speaks volumes of my own experiences and speaks even more as to the impact of this song upon me.
Hopefully through this someone can take something even remotely close to what I’ve taken from this song. That would be a special thing.
‘Jane Doe’ is taken from the album of the same name by Converge released in 2001 on Equal Vision/DeathWishInc
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