Must Hear Tracks: “Wild, Wild, Wild Horses” “Eyeballs” “Thawing Dawn” “Phantom Limbo”
Artist’s self-portraits have always been fascinating to me. The melding of technical prowess, aesthetic sensibility, and psychological self-image. How do people with the skills to render themself choose to do it? Van Gogh’s teeming blue-grey textures, Khalo’s accentuated unibrow and wayward gaze, Picasso’s barren distillation of himself. These self-portraits probe below the canvas. They don’t say “this is a picture of me,” they say “this is me.”
The cover art of Thawing Dawn by Andrew Savage is no different. A gifted painter and designer, Savage has his own visual language when it comes to presenting his music. As the frontman of Parquet Courts, his album-art blends Bauhaus minimalism and looney toons psychedelia. With Thawing Dawn, his first solo record, Savage swaps out the hand-drawn characters for a lone, black-and-white photo of himself. Lounging alone on a bed. Feet up, legs crossed, guitar in hand. Like an old country balladeer, strumming away in a corner of some seedy roadside motel. Inspired by Reid Miles and Francis Wolff‘s iconic work for Blue Note Records, this self-portrait / album cover compliments the record’s songs perfectly.
As the cover art suggests, Thawing Dawn is an Andrew Savage album through and through. Though there is some stylistic overlap with Parquet Courts, Savage relished the fact that this record was not a collaborative effort. Written over the course of 8 years, Thawing Dawn is comprised of odds and ends that didn’t quite fit on a Parquet Courts release. Haunting spirits of songs that refused to float off to the great beyond. As more of these songs accumulated, so did a stylistic direction: not punk, but country-western. The music of rolling plains and bouncing tumbleweeds. With all the longing and self-reflection to match those sprawling spaces.
The frequent use of pedal-steel guitar and expansive reverb gives Thawing Dawn the feeling of a road trip across Middle America, with episodes playing out like stops along the highway. “Eyeballs,” the second track, revs the engine early. It is a genuinely funny rock ‘n’ roll tune with a 60+ mph clip to it. It provides the screamer of a line “shot at and missed, shat at and hit,” which never fails to bring a smile to my face. A smile that Andrew Savage wipes away seconds later, shouting: “Have I showed you my eyeballs lately? Could you see that I’ve been hurtin’ inside?“
“Ladies of Houston” is lumbering but surprisingly light, with an earworm of a chorus that had me repeating “I’ve got a full ring of keys again” subconsciously for weeks. It highlights one of Thawing Dawn’s greatest strengths: the tangible imagery of Andrew Savage’s songs. The full ring of keys, jingling heavy. A satisfying symbol of stability. Assured entry. Steel reliability.
Elsewhere, Savage mines the depths of his songwriting reservoir. “Phantom Limbo” is a gorgeous tune that’s been under renovation since 2008. It is one of the most overtly country influenced songs on the album, with silky slide guitars that wash over like “the sweetest breeze that’s ever blown through me”. In keeping with the theme of balladry and introspection, that line ain’t about the wind, it’s about the one that got away. Savage delivers his most halting line here, addressed to an unnamed past lover: “There’s a point to life, nestled in your eyes, when you’re laughing at all my jokes.” But as somber and sentimental as “Phantom Limbo” gets, the real jeweled bolo-tie of Thawing Dawn is “Wild, Wild, Wild Horses.”
It is an approaching thunderstorm, looming closer and closer on the paper-flat Texas plain. Sending guitar slashes of lightning rippling into perfect space. It is a love letter that comes to life. A slow-but-sure culmination. Gears of fate turning with mechanical determination:
“Like a strandbeest mocking the slow motionless wild wild wild horses, I’ve broken into gallop too.”
It begins with introspection, the seeds of desire taking root and spreading out.
“Starving. What it feels like mostly, feeding someone else your heart, from a distance.”
Then, with one white-hot bolt of guitar and one sharply spoken name, the tale shifts from fantasy to reality. The conversation begins:
“Alice, Listen to me closely, hear my words and feel something. I don’t see you as much as I need to and I need to know what that means.”
The gears move quicker now, gaining momentum. Leading to a drunken proposal:
Promise always, that’s a long ways, and the world is big,
but your eyes are too, plus I’m a little drunk,
and I know what I want.
I didn’t always know, no it’s taken years”
Cut to the next morning. Embracing in the chill of dawn, staving off the shivers in each other’s arms. All while the guitar lightning intensifies, with strikes blending into each other to create a drone. It is the sense of building static, an impending and great release of tension. The storm of love is overhead now. Fate has been fulfilled.
Where Parquet Courts’ Andrew Savage “almost had to start a fight” while waxing revolutionary about violence as a tool of oppression, rising sea levels, and radical kindness, Thawing Dawn’s Andrew Savage is more concerned with his own stories – anything but contemporary politics. Having already established himself as a sharp-tongued social critic, Thawing Dawn showcases Andrew Savage as a thoughtful and sentimental poet. His arrangements, vocal register, and lyrics all work together to create a sense of introspection and intimacy that his work in Parquet Courts rarely touches. When the dust settles and the great American road trip ends, Thawing Dawn amounts to a satisfying, consistently rewarding excursion for any fan of Parquet Courts or country-tinged rock. The weary, sobering songwriting and Americana flourishes predate present-day masters like MJ Lenderman and Wednesday, spinning tales of longing, frustration, and sacred stability in the belly of a crumbling empire.
Sources: Genius Lyrics, others are hyperlinked
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