"I feel so little on the inside, but my skin is persistently life-sized."
I know this guy
Gavin Castleton. He's a musical mad-scientist. Always composing, recording, producing, whatever. He can't stop, and most of the time, its delicious. We met a while back. He was the singer/keyboardist for the Providence futurock pioneers
Gruvis Malt, who I used to bother for guest list spots and CD's in exchange for photographic documentation and college radio airplay. I was pretty annoying. At some point, that turned into "dating the drummer (Scott McPhail)", which turned into slumber parties at the half-built loft where they all lived and practiced at the time.
Here is where I describe said loft. It was an old mill complex that was under renovation to make artist lofts. The walls were not fully built in their unit, heat was not fully utilized, and cleaning was rarely partaken in. They were living there for very little money while they "helped build". I'm not sure how much building was done outside of some dry-wall application, plywood placement, and half-pipe fabrication (serious. there was a half-pipe in the living room). None of the walls reached the giant ceilings, and Scott's bedroom was perched atop the bathroom. Classy.
There was music all the time, from band-related practice and recording to concerts and openings in the adjacent gallery (which could be reached through the aforementioned bathroom....One time 2 girls heard them practicing from the gallery and ended up searching for the source, finding themselves in the awkward position of being in a filthy bathroom, trying to peek out of it stealthily....it didn't work for them. "Who the hell is giggling in our bathroom?!?!?! Show yourselves!", i believe, was the next line to come from rehearsal). This was while they were recording the album "Simon", and I would show up at work with loops of songs ridiculously stuck in my head. One time Gavin was recording a cover of MJ's 'Billie Jean' with one of his female singer friends (around bedtime). There were several takes. I was toast the next day.
Why would such a sweet, professional, relatively clean female ever want to find herself in this environment, let alone sleep in it, you may ask? Well I'm simply not sure. I think part of it was that I was between apartments and staying with my parents for a little bit of that time, but for other parts of it I did have my own place, so lets chalk it up to the fact that really funny shit went down there all the time, I was in that much love with Scott, and also that Gavin's dog, Lumas, is amazing.
Anyway, these guys would all challenge themselves to play tough chord progressions and funky time signatures. Stuff that my feeble 4/4 loving brain can appreciate, but was not always comfortable with. (Being that I work with children with self-regulation challenges, I wonder sometimes if playing in 5, 7, and 11 so frequently actually does something tweaky to one's equilibrium).
So, since that time, a lot has changed. We could write a novel about the 6 or so years in between, and I've simply not got the time. Gruvis stopped making albums together, and
Ebu Gogo formed from three members, and on top of that, Gavin was doing some solo stuff. A while ago, he left RI and moved to Oregon.
My favorite thing about the solo stuff he's done in the last few years is that he picks a theme (it's very "
This American Life", really), and goes with it for an album. You've got your Hospital Hymns, written from the perspective of an uncomfortably religious central supply worker in a hospital. You've got your A Bullet, A Lever, A Key, written as though Gavin quit musicking and continued his life in another direction. You've got your (personal favorite) For the Love of Pete, which is all about his relationship with his former girlfriend; a delicious work of mostly 4/4, frosted with the sweet ups and downs that come standard in relationships. It was my favorite at the time, because, having been getting over my own breakup with Scott, and also, being a girl, I was able to relate to so much of the subject matter. So much of his stuff before then had been about the music industry and those interactions, and I found Pete to be accessible on so many levels. Not to mention that I was familiar with the characters personally, and had even creepily paralleled that relationship (Scott and I had gotten together and broken up along a similar time line)
And now, you've got your Home. Home takes that same relationship, and dissects it completely. If you read through or listen to Gavin's interviews about it, he talks about how it was his way of processing everything that happened, and getting to a place where he could move on. He wrote it sequentially, and follows the relationship from beginning to end. His ex initially helped write the female lyrics for it for the first couple tracks, and then as that became more challenging, he took over writing for the female part, which gave him some deeper (painful) insight into the other side of the story.
I should mention that the whole time, it plays out almost like a musical (sorry, i live in NYC now. Everything can be made into a musical. I've written 3 musicals today, in fact). There is plenty of 4/4 to keep me feeling regulated, and the rhythm and melody change brilliantly to match the mood in each of 14 'numbers'. Its gorgeous. I know it doesn't work out in the end. I watched it not work out in the end. I talked to him about how it didn't work out in the end. But I STILL FALL IN LOVE when they fall in love. I reminisce when they reminisce. There are also little throwbacks to Pete, like where the track Parallel Rabbits on Home uses the same music as Bad Rabbits from Pete. I'm supposing here, but I would imagine that the use of the term "Home" is an allusion to the line in Pete's final track, Hibernatal: "You feel like home to me."
So you're listening to this doomed relationship develop. And then. Halfway through. Zombies.
FUCKING BRILLIANT! Zombies take over and now its a chase. The thing about zombies is, they're gross and rotting. They should be dead but they lurch forward. Slowly, deliberately, unnaturally. How did no one ever relate zombies with the way we try to patch our love back together? Its so plainly obvious to me now!
So then you've got an album about zombies. Love in the time of the zombie-pocalypse. Its tough, let me tell you, making a relationship work whilst hiding in an abandoned supermarket. And ultimately, she secretly communicates with the outside world, and gets rescued, leaving him to his secret supermarket life.
There are two endings. He gets trapped by the zombies, and breaks down alone and kills himself and gets eaten at the same time. But wait! He is then visited by (what else?) two
ladybugs, who convince him to move along. The following track, "the Human Torch", is where she comes back in a helicopter and rescues him to bring him to a delightful new island home. And then you notice (if you're smart) that there's no female in this awesome uplifting track. Yeah, its totally because its a fakey ending. I love that song. It's this whole denial fantasy song, and its beautiful. The female vocal (sung by Lauren Coleman, a delight) comes back in the next and final track 'credits', where its all kinda explained and packaged nicely. Years of pain summed up in a few well-written lines.
"There is no clear agenda. There is no safe retreat. There's just the lengthy process of filling in the you-shaped hole in me . . . home is not the place you dwell. Home is where you see yourself."
This one is really great. I've been taking it apart and exploring it in my brain since I downloaded it when it came out on itunes. And, thing is, it doesn't even really run parallel to my life this time. My own recent relationship fell apart quickly and bizarrely, before any real substance could develop.
This break up was more like a terrible J-Horror really. Not classy in the least, and purely for shock-effect. Like horror porn. I'm pretty sure Elisha Cuthbert was involved, actually. Maybe that's why I like Home so much. If you're gonna lament, you may as well pick something worthwhile.
There is more delicious media and info on his blog,
here.Home is Available now on itunes, and will be released in hard copy in April. He'll be touring the US in a week or so. Of note (to me) is the upcoming show on 3/24 at Googies lounge on the LES.
Check it out.
