TLOBF Loves… J. Tillman

02 June 2008, 08:30

J. Tillman is from Seattle, he used to play drums in a post-rock band called Saxon Shore, but left after one album. Soon after he started writing and performing singer/songwriter type music, mixing folk, country and blues, releasing a couple of limited release and not widely well known albums.

Now, I hesitate to use the word ‘sensitive’ because of various negative connotations that it has accrued over the last decade or so, but when I first heard ‘Darling Night’, the first track off Minor Works, it was what immediately came to mind. There is a fragility and a hurt in Tillman’s voice that can knock you flat the first time you hear it, and it embodies some of the best things I look for when listening to country/Americana influenced music. His voice is strong, but high up in the register and with the ability to pull out a thinness when needed. A country twang hovers just out of sight and there is a strong but indefinable, (to this English guy, anyway), American accent. That’s not all, because there is also a stoic solidity in there too, borne out in the lyrical content as well as the delivery, hardly ever do you sense that the guy is feeling sorry for himself, he just talks about the realities and the sadness of relationships and life sans schmaltz.

As an album, Minor Works is slightly long and slightly over-orchestrated, but this can be forgiven due to the strength of songwriting found throughout. Violins, lap steel, piano and Tillman’s steady picking and strumming on the acoustic are the usual components. Songs can over stay their welcome, and the production is a touch too rich, but the melange of folk, country and blues with his brilliant voice is always something to hear. There is a similar feeling to Jason Molina and Magnolia Electric Co., except if Molina kept writing those beautifully sad songs he did as Songs: Ohia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIcQ2GBt9D4

The source of long tracks and meandering can be found if you go back to one of his first albums Long May You Run from (I think) 2005, which had a limited release. Here songs sometimes go to 6 or 7 minutes, and it is all performed by just Tillman and his guitar, a very minimal aesthetic. The meandering spirit of these songs speak clearly of his next album Minor Works, it seems as though he got a better distribution deal and decided to give the style of songwriting found on Long May You Run the full-band treatment. What gets highlighted when you listen to Long May You Run is Tillman’s guitar playing, un-flashy picked riffs and strummed progressions that manage to find a wide landscape to explore, and he seems so intent on exhausting that landscape that the songs get pushed to slightly unusual times for this sort of music. I would be lying if I didn’t say it can get a little boring as he cycles through every permutation and repetition of themes on his guitar, but when it works out well it takes you along for the ride through those places. The vocals have the same work to do as the guitar due to the minimal style, and they step up brilliantly. Quieter, sadder and lonelier than Minor Works, and yet somehow stronger, more melodic and more beautiful.

Cancer And Delirium was released around April last year. It’s a cliché, but he really does meld together both of the his previous albums, really well recorded like Minor Works, and with some well thought out but never over-done extra instrumentation, and astutely austere like Long May You Run. Then there is a tone that is all new, a slight lifting of the mood and an almost communal feel. Tillman became friends with Damien Jurado at some point over these three albums, which is utterly unsurprising because he is another obvious touchstone for the music, much like Jason Molina. It seems possible that Jurado’s brilliant Ghost Of David album from 2002 might have influenced Cancer And Delirium, although the extreme sadness of some of Tillman’s work has been scaled back, there is enough there to strike a chord with Jurado’s album. First track on Cancer…‘Visions Of A Troubled Mind’ could be a brother, literally, to first track ‘Medication’ off of Ghost…. There is also a subtle ambience in the background of some tracks, possibly passing cars, and a great attention to detail in the recording of the album, much like on Ghost….

So there is J. Tillman as of now, he has a new album coming out this year called Vacilando Territory Blues, which will make it at least 4 albums in 4 years from the man. Some tracks from the new one can be heard on his myspace, and Cancer And Delirium tracks can be heard on last.fm (links below). And he is the newest member of hot-shit band of the moment Fleet Foxes, as a touring and, eventually, recording member, a fine addition I’m sure, maybe I should start listening to Fleet Foxes now?