A career spanning over fourteen years, composed of three albums and as many Ep, a collection of writings (Pare-chocs / Editions Balle d’Argent), a documentary movie (Cruising the Dream / Solo Productions) made in 1994 during a long crossing of the United States, numerous collaborations with other artists as a musician, sound engineer and producer. All this has finally brought Bruno Green back to his first love and influences: folk-country music.
Ploughed, fantasized, digested, this musical direction is the essence of The Blue Void Trilogy, a discographic and artistic project as ambitious as it is consequential that was launched in 2003*1 by a musician who gladly declares himself as “bulimic”. This poetical re-appropriation of popular North-American culture roots itself as much in cinema and literature as in music, with confessed references among giants such as John Ford, William Faulkner or John Steinbeck, but also Woodie Guthrie, Neil Young or even Uncle Tupelo.
Horse mood, first volume of this trilogy, explores the grooves and rustic crevices of this culture, with an obsessional interest for the western American mythology. Bruno Green relentlessly observes in order to better break down the origins and the mechanism of this society, which in the end has invaded the world (in the real and figurative sense). The lyrics and the music evoke the daily life of conquering generations that have paid for it in blood, sweat and despair, with poetry reminiscent of Cormac Mac Carthy or Charles Frazier. It also tells of the overarching religion, politics and social struggles. The atmosphere is of twilight, the sound as aerial as the instruments are acoustic and earth-bound. Pedal-steel, organ and guitars lead a strange dance amidst a red desert.
God’s country, second volume of the trilogy, recorded in February 2005, witnesses the arrival of Pascal Humbert and Billy Conway, respectively bassist for Sixteen horsepower and drummer for Morphine, in the formation gathered at the Cocoon studio. The sound of the group evolves. The album is more raw, more immediate, more “urban” and carries the guiding presence of Bob Dylan’s Time out of mind on some tracks. The surprise is as unexpected as it is assumed. The biting guitars of Goulven Hamel draw violent contours to the American tandem’s rhythms, while the haunted voice of Bruno Green continues to paint the fate of these poor people, who find their solace only in a perpetual flight and a quest for a more favorable future or after-life.
Recognized and co-opted by the new Bostonian*2 folk-Americana scene and the label Hi’n’dry*3, Bruno Green has closed his relentless traveler’s bag and returned to his music’s home land in the spring of 2005. In Cambridge, MA, he has recently recorded the third volume of his trilogy, Father & son, under the artistic direction of Billy Conway*4. Surrounded by musicians from the Table Top collective and by references from American folk (such as Jennifer Kimball, Sean Staples or Jimmy Ryan), Bruno Green continues to explore and build his particular universe of dusty country-folk, ageless poetry and images as beautiful as they are strange, heavy with a more or less distant history, which, though we are not American, is not so remote from us.
With little preoccupation for his personal exposure, Bruno Green follows his path on the edge of consumerist and media-filled highways, for the joy of a small group of insiders. Between electrical poetry and guitar wood, he has found his own place in this desert that he explores and where one cohabitates.
We won’t push the offense of saying that it is rare. We’ll just say that it is precious.
What the press says (David Cowling / Americana.uk / 2006):
Triumphant trilogy is Americana at its best
It is a significant achievement of this trilogy that though it is ambitious in its scope and execution it remains an intimate and humble experience. There are no grandiose statements, no bombast, no attention is drawn unduly towards it, no great claims are made for it - is on a human scale and it is intensely humane. Musically you can separate the three discs:the first, ‘Horse Mood,' has previously been released and reviewed on this website and it has the maverick ambition and craft of Sparklehorse. He is joined on the second, ‘God’s Country’ by Pascal Humbert from 16 Horsepower on bass and the Morphine drummer Billy Conway - here the sound is sharper and less personal, as though a prototype has been taken and built by experienced craftsmen. The third still contains Conway but he is joined by musicians from the Boston Table Top collective and the result is more of a return to the folkier sound; there is workshop dust still on these recordings. Put them all together and you get a journey across America, a bit like Sufjan’s 50 states projects condensed into 95 minutes.
‘Horse Mood’ is full of gentle strums, swirls of pedal steel, the songs full of images of nature and despite their electronic style seem like a natural part of the landscape. Things move calmly; organically the songs are somewhere in the deep brush of folk in a clearing where it borders with country music, genres unimportant, they just exist, with gentle instrumentals swaying like a wild meadow full of natural colour and movement - parched vocals and naked banjo join together and pedal steel sounds like a hymn. There is the backwoods genius of Mark Linkous and the grizzled world play of Howe Gelb in these songs: they have that sort or presence, swelling and subsiding as easy as breathing, uncommon noises co-existing happily, details sketched where nothing is too polished. These are celebrations of nature in miniature, a glimpse that reveals insects at play - sunlight rain, horses, cattle, people, a playground where saws sing and birds twitter, where the weather is changeable and dominates the landscape.
‘God’s Country’ starts with much the same theme as ‘Horse Mood’ - the mood is different, there is more rhythm and propulsion, and the guitar too sounds anything but natural as it squawks and bends, but this is more of an elegy than a celebration. There are themes of death and loss, of things coming to an end, the music slapping rather than caressing, more dust bowl than nature's bounty. Surfaces are hard, lines straight - we’re moving towards urban spaces, the music more mechanical, electrical, the Arcade Fire’s country cousins coming to town, banjo dueling with electric guitar, backing vocals removing the solitary from the equation. This is more of a collective effort; harder, sparser and prone to catching fire.
The main difference found on ‘Father & Son’ is how it feels much warmer than its immediate predecessor - the guitars are softer and less brutal, the drums less precise, and here it seems a more social record, more generous in tone. You can sing-along at times; it is the sound that has reconciled the two previous themes and sounds. He also moves from major themes around nature to songs that are more personal in nature and that address that other universal theme, love. Here again it is handled with loving care - there is a spiritual and musical warmth that flows through the songs. Things do turn towards the second half where death becomes a central motif, the music loses the warmth and replaces it with a more funereal sound, and Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ is ingested and becomes part of the narrative like a snake swallowing a mouse. As we reach the end we return to the beginning to another version of the opening song from ‘Horse Mood’ and so we come full circle, which is an entirely fitting ending to this song cycle.
This is an excellent and important work and one that neatly sums up all that is good about Americana.
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