Posts tagged Acoustic

Title: Surrounded By Lights
Artist: Jesse Sprinkle
Label: Blind Records
Length: 12 Tracks / 44:35

Gorgeous, stripped-down acoustics coupled with careful harmonies typify this offering from Jesse Sprinkle.

Jesse was a founding member of the legendary 90′s Christian rock band Poor Old Lu, and is a former member of Morella’s Forest, Demon Hunter, Dead Poetic, A Cold Vein, and Burning Daylight. Unless I am mistaken, in all of these cases, he served as the drummer. Such is not the case on Blind Records’ 2008 release Surrounded By Lights, which, if you include Jesse’s time calling himself “The World Inside”, is approximately his 12th solo recording. On this, as with all aforementioned solo projects, Jesse basically handles everything – drums certainly, but also guitars, vocals, and generally any other instrumentation you hear. Despite releasing such a litany of material over the last decade, as well as arduous touring with Demon Hunter for a period, very few are familiar with his solo work, which is characterized by harmonies – at times soaring, at times subdued – and beautiful and simple acoustic guitar work laced nicely with other orchestration.

Jesse categorizes this record as “dark pop”, and it’s a fitting moniker. The overall tone of the disc is shaded, and the mood is decidedly quiet and suspended in thought and contemplation. It comes through in the downtempo pacing as well as the lyrics, such as this example from midway through the disc:

There comes a moment when you have to touch
All the hurt you hold so dear
Then an echo bounces off the blood
And it asks you to follow near

I could not protect it
I could not discern
Between the lines of fabrication’s words
Jesus never told me
How to love and learn
In a time like now,
Between the Ice and Earth
(from “Between the Ice and Earth”)

This isn’t the sort of record that sticks in your head, as a rule. It is, however, the sort of record that has a distinguishable “sound” that is very attractive to have backing up specific moods. If you’re feeling subdued and mournful, melancholy, or perhaps apprehensive and anxious for a future to come… Sprinkle provides the soundtrack.

This guilt within
Isn’t what I’ve been
In the August light
It’s paperthin
But we don’t begin
Until we really die
And the answer’s become
Erased
We’ll dance in the sun
For days
In the moonlight above
Forgave,
And one day You’ll ask me to come.
(from “Lights of June”)

Jesse has a great falsetto – a rare thing amongst singer/songwriters of late (two others that come to mind immediately are The Rocket Summer’s Bryce Avary and Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan), and, even better, has a great ear for harmonies – another rarity. Both are put to extensive use on Surrounded By Lights.

If I was forced to draw comparisons, I’d say that Jesse sounds like his brother Aaron Sprinkle (also known to release poppy acoustic guitar records) might if he were prone to slave over his records as much as he slaves over his production work for Tooth & Nail. Which is to say, Jesse has layered Surrounded By Lights with enough complexity to give it depth, without sacrificing the sublimity that is “a man and his guitar”. Those with a penchant for the sort of things you frequently hear strummed and hummed at coffeehouses and small pubs will find plenty to wash themselves in here.

Other than the transcendent pacing and “feel” of the music, the decidedly “dark” part of the “dark pop” found on Surrounded By Lights is the lyrics. Jesse doesn’t deal in happy, optimistic generalizations here – there is an urgency and a stirring evidence of hard-wrought labour in the words. Consider the previous examples quoted as well as this:

Sleepwalking to destinations dim
She’s responding with nothing but a grin:
Your religion is frail
Blurred visions and rusty nails
The womb of grace unshown
No…

Keys dropping and games evolved to wars
There’s no stopping, as ceilings become floors
Your correction has failed
Steel buildings and casket sales
Remind me who I was

Fold me over, lighting…
Fill the ocean, crying…
Will we go down, fighting
With the worst years yet to come?
(from “Steel Buildings And Caskets)

Lyrically, there’s a lot to ingest. Jesse makes no attempt to mask his expansive grasp on the English language – and it shows on every track with plenty of excellent and complicated constructions to work your head through. There’s a lot of spiritual content as well, much of which is difficult to make heads and tails of because some of it is presented as quotation from a character in a song, whereas other parts are Jesse himself speaking. The general tone of it seems to be neutral – questioning and curious, not necessarily attacking or defending. The best thing to compare it to would be the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which is quoted in the liner notes:

Light is sweet,
And it pleases the eye to see the sun.

However many years a man may live,
Let him enjoy them all.
But let him remember the days of darkness,
For they will be many.
Everything to come is meaningless.
Ecclesiastes 11:7-8 (NIV)

The recurring theme of the album is in it’s title: we are Surrounded By Lights, even amidst the memory of our “days of darkness”. This album appears to be just such a memoir – memories of dark days in Jesse’s life, captured, redeemed, and shared, hopefully, with those who will listen.

The bottom line is that this is a darkly atmospheric, beautifully organic, harmonious, soaring, haunting collection of songs. Play it on those early mornings when you scrape yourself out of bed, those late nights when you’re chained to the keyboard to polish off that last assignment, or those times when the world makes so little sense you just need to retreat from it. Highly recommended listening.

4 lightrays out of 5.

Standout Tracks:Better Places, Between The Ice And Earth, Lights Of June, Wait Or Want, Steel Buildings And Caskets, The Legend Of Saint Agnes.

Jerry Bolton – for The Phantom Tollbooth.
April 6th, 2009