Abyssianian as in the abyss, the cryptic goal of life. So inevitable it gets two songs in the set written in 2011, the first an exercise in Central American fiction, the latter a portrait of a prelate whose crown is “a cypress stump that won’t budge from the swamp.”
Volker has been beyond prolific since retiring from the Radiators. Now he can be in his own band, Trio Mollusc, and in his larger band with the Iguanas, and in the Suspects, and in Raw Oyster Cult (shush) and, ahem, in the Radiators during their periodic New Orleans reunion gigs, like at Jazz Fest earlier this year and at Tipitina’s in January.
He’s curating yet another Rads overview collection, organizing his own music and writings over the years, and turning out these wonderful homemade records recorded in his aerie at Bayou St. John. After a life of hectic rock and roll road antics Volker can savor every creative moment, linger on a line in a song for a week if he needs to as he wanders along the bayou in meditation. You can really hear that time-stopping calm in these songs, which alternately reflect on the past and offer fresh images of a creative life teeming with stimuli.
These songs are all about sound matched to the image of word, often words of bemused farewell.
The hypnotic dreamscape of “Shot Through” evokes scenes of discorporation: “Have you ever felt you leaving yourself/dancing over the body lying down there on the bed…” Or how about in “Going Dark, where “I stepped out of the movie and walked away.” Then, in “Far From the End of the World,” Volker likens himself to a ghost, then adds “Where I am right now the ghosts have the run of the place / Just like that hidden part of you that’s always running away.”
“It All Comes Back” sounds like the theme song for the myth of the eternal return as “It comes rolling on down the track / Through the fog and the rain/it all comes back again.” “Work March” harks back even further to, among other things, prenatal dreams: “Oh my soul I can’t wait to get born.”
Of course, nailing down the ephemera of meaning in Volker’s shifting consciousness can be harrowing work. “Spooky Beauty,” for example, appears at first to be about mass market celebrity behavior, but as usual there’s a ghost lurking in the rafters of the song as Volker sings “Inside abandoned houses long forgotten / A city floats on waves of memory / Sorrow the only thing that keeps us free.”
If there’s a more eloquent evocation of the soul of New Orleans out there I haven’t seen it.
