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Album Review
by SashaS
10-4-2003
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| Dan Bern's 'Fleeting Days' reward time |
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Dan Bern: 'Fleeting Days'
(Cooking Vinyl)
Dan Bern ‘trips’ a mental ‘Graceland’
Wondering whether to start this review with a quote from a classic writer, mind reloads with the late Ken Kesey, author of ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, among other tomes. No, he’s not one of Mr Bern’s favourite writers – his preferred books are by Charles Bukowski, John Fante, James Thurber – but due to going against the grain and attempting to undermine, or circumnavigate, obstacles while dealing with the fragile division of outside and internal life…
‘Fleeting Days’ is a literate kinda album by a man who is well aware of the passage of time and the bitter taste it leaves behind if abused. And yet, it is not ironic – not entirely – in its dealings with the everyday situations and relationships but observed from an atypical standpoint and with a wry humour doze. The sense of the album is that no life is simply tragedy or comedy but a combo of the two, with the entire kaleidoscope in-between. It’s like seeing a girl crying in a platform, it doesn’t affect your life but for a brief moment, before you catch the train.
The disc’s wide musical spectrum includes the joyous synth-pop of ‘Jane’ that is opposed by punkish ‘Crow’, never sticking around enough for any genre to grow roots. At the same time, this is an album by a man who’s cleaning his psychological closet to keep the valuable and eliminate the rest. Bern finds that the Rock’n’Roll life is a ‘Graceland’ of the mind, a place where everyone who loves music can live, with or without a functioning Elvis. And ‘Closer To You’ appears to be a love song, but it’s intense, gloomy and elliptical, strewn with broken crockery like an ending of potent, painful affair.
Although not an outlaw, he leaves that to Steve Earle, Bern is certainly an outsider who doesn’t confirm to whatever style-file one may be trying to squeeze him in. ‘Fleeting Days’, in broadest sense, belongs to Americana but it really transcends folksiness and moves to rock side, it is more akin to Bob Dylan (‘I Need You’ and ‘Fly Away’) and Elvis Costello (‘Closer To You’) than to Johnny Cash, for instance. Then, ‘City’ glides on a guitar that gently weeps to tribute (?) the late George Harrison as well as acknowledges Eric Clapton.
Dan Bern lives in an improbably named Truth Of Consequence, New Mexico, and there is a touch of surrealism about his music. His life’s provided suitable background for it: born to Jewish immigrant parents and growing up in Mt. Vernon, Iowa where he studied cello as a child, he packed his guitar for the West Coast in early 1990s. His eponymous debut album was issued in 1997, followed by another quartet of long-playing vinyls.
It’s appropriate that on ‘Fleeting Days’ even the über-helden have problem/s: ‘Superman’ is impotent to save the mess of our world, hangs up his cape and puts in a call for Lois Lane… But not Dan Bern: he thinks deep and knows how to make it sound big.
8/10
SashaS
10-4-2003
Dan Bern And The IJBC’s album ‘Fleeting Days’ is released 07 April 2003 on Cooking Vinyl
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