
timothy e. cooney jr – mountain blues (pleaded to go)
Any serious movement tells disciples to live in silence. It’s only natural that they would. Some movements do it because silent followers are also followers who don’t complain too much. Other clubs genuinely believe that instilling a love for silence will benefit these people long-term. Adhering to silence takes a kind of mental discipline. It has a kind of cleansing effect.
But most people can’t do it. Silence feels unnatural to them. It drives them crazy. They’re thrilled by the advent of social media and need to turn on the television whenever they’ve been left home alone. And these are their last resorts. They’d much rather know that there is someone with them at all times. It turns out that being a social creature is as much a curse as being an unfriendly bastard.
Timothy e. Cooney Jr went out looking for silence and got more than he bargained for. “mountain blues (pleaded to go)” is a diary of that trip. Written in a classic folk format, with sprinklings of country instrumentation, Cooney reveals that the solo holiday didn’t go exactly to plan. There’s great loneliness and sadness that can be found here in the mountains and, likely, living in all of us. That’s quite a burden to bear and something best described in song form.
O KANENAS – The Last Goodbye
Listening to music that is part of a nation’s folklore is a fascinating deep dive into history and a needed respite from modern pop music. And, well, sure, you may think that it is also a clever way to get to the root of people’s culture.
While that may not be entirely false, you should consider a couple of things. First of all, it’s the fact that old folklore music was made by people who were entirely different from the ones roaming the Earth right now. The best we can do is reproduce it.
Secondly, once you’ve listened to enough of it, sometimes something strikes you – the problems and, largely, the spirit is the same across the music of different cultures. The folk songs that have survived are generally about bravery and/or about broken hearts.
O KANENAS are interested in the mythology of heroism. They’re also interested in really old sounds and how they may be blended together. “The Last Goodbye” is the surprising marriage of traditional Celtic and Greek music. It’s an unlikely union on marriage but one that suits the song, the storytelling, and the search for some kind of ancient wisdom very well.