
Artists, as well as fans like to complain about the music business not being fair. Well, what in the world is? But despite their sustained and best efforts, it’s not the record execs, the producers, or the marketing teams who have made themselves indispensable.
Lying in the shadows and pulling the strings are a category of people even less known to the general public – the songwriters. But they do this and should be able to demand whatever fee they wish for their work. They are the ones without which the music game grinds to a halt. They are the ones without which we’d just be listening to bar bands play Top 40 hits forever. And it’s the songwriting efforts, like the ones for which the rising sign’s John Attis is responsible, that make us think we’ll run into another great song soon enough.

That’s not to say that the rising sign makes it easy for listeners on the newest album “whatever is real.” This is as challenging as reading a novel by one of the Russian classics, but ultimately as rewarding.
Taking a queue from Tom Waits’ jazz-tinged compositions, as well as inspiration from Waits’ hobo observer persona, Attis writes stories of terrible things happening to good people and then gives them the nice musical arrangement that he can find.
Take album opener, “nocturne.” This isn’t just the dream of a city falling asleep and being gently washed away by the rain upwards to the stars. It’s the dream of every lonely writer who found himself in an all-night cafe. The trick is that Attis finds the sounds and lyrics to put this into existence.
There are more magic tricks as we go on. “in two” is a desperate love that allows the rising sign to indulge selenophile obsessions and to work on the Tom Waits vocal growl, but there are more twists to it than you’d expect.
In fact, the orchestration throughout may just be the star of the show. It’s not just that the risgin sign is interested in jazz music. The songwriter is interested in old sounds that feel old and part of a world that doesn’t exist anymore. On “time passes,” or “down and troubled,” the texture of the music becomes an ancient passageway.
That’s not to say that the songwriter can’t hold your attention using (nearly) only his voice and the accompaniment of a piano. “heaven just yet” and “centuries” do just that.
But if Waits taught his followers anything, it’s to always be daring and be willing to spring surprises on casual and familiar listeners alike. “down and troubled” is a low-down flea-bitten blues featuring slinky psychedelic rock guitar. As for the album closer, “shining eyes,” you may want to pack your dancing shoes and predictions of the future for this experimental robot-rock.
Where does it all leave us? Staring at the curtain having come down before us, of course. “whatever is real” is a well-crafted theatre show. It’ll be playing in your mind if you let it. And it’ll never play, or end in the same way twice.