Most songwriters write from the first person as if they’re opening their diaries—confessional, autobiographical, inviting you into their emotional truth. Randy Newman writes from the first person like Flannery O’Connor or Raymond Carver: his “I” is a construct, a character who reveals himself through what he says and, more devastatingly, through what he casually omits.
In 1964, just four months before his sudden death in Berlin at the age of 36, Eric Dolphy recorded Out to Lunch!—an album that continues to rattle the walls of jazz orthodoxy. Released by Blue Note Records, it is the only album Dolphy made for the label, but it stands as one of the most important and uncompromising statements of the avant-garde jazz movement.
How important is Bon Iver to your musical soundscape? I would argue forcefully Bon Iver is important to all of us who care about the ineffable, ineluctable obliqueness of spare emotively delivered lyrics, electronic voice sampling, proto drumming, solo acoustic, orchestrally abundant, emotional soundscapes.
