{"id":18267,"date":"2016-07-23T10:51:13","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T14:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=18267"},"modified":"2016-07-23T10:52:38","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T14:52:38","slug":"weekend-music-break-limestone-chorus-woods-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/weekend-music-break-limestone-chorus-woods-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Music Break: Limestone Chorus, “Woods & Water”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LimestoneL<\/span>et us consider, first, the name “Limestone Chorus.”<\/p>\n

Limestone<\/em> sounds rugged<\/em> to me, rugged and roughcut. It suggests quarrying, of course, and it suggests caverns carved by underground rivers. It’s a sedimentary rock, so it crumbles and dissolves rather easily on its own — unlike (say) granite, basalt, and other igneous and metamorphic rocks… and it is everywhere<\/em>. Wikipedia tells me that it makes up 10% of the volume of all sedimentary rocks. While it is inarguably rock<\/em>, unlike (say) sandstone, limestone is curiously organic: “Most limestone is composed of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs.”<\/p>\n

Think about that a moment: limestone is a “living” rock — a common building and construction material comprising the remnants of a gazillion creatures<\/em>. (Think about that the next time you’re inside a building of concrete: you might as well be undersea.)<\/p>\n

So here we’ve got a band pursuing one of the longer threads — a sub-genre: folk, soul, and Americana — of (yes) rock<\/em> history, a band named for this curiously-organic inorganic material. If the name had instead been constructed from the word “granite” or “quartzite,” the effect would have been totally different — calling to mind not the flowing of water and the whisper of grains, but hammers and chisels and bang-bang-bang.<\/p>\n

And then there’s chorus<\/em>: voices twined together, harmonizing…<\/p>\n

Yeah. Now you’re getting the idea.<\/p>\n

The name “Limestone Chorus” apparently represents a recent name change; the group (in a slightly reduced configuration) had previously been called “Shore Thing.” Okay, the latter was clever(ish), with the pun. But it was also <\/em>easy, glib, and really wasted an entire word — <\/em>thing — which communicated nothing at all.\u00a0I have no idea how much thought and anxiety went into the name change, how much conscious vs. unconscious decision-making came into play, but as a band name, “Limestone Chorus” is leagues beyond “Shore Thing.”<\/em><\/p>\nS<\/span>o then there’s this song. Again, look first to the name: “Woods & Water.” When you hear a song title like that, do you imagine you’ll find headbanging within? Will the musicians assault their instruments and their amplifiers — and the audience’s ears — with an avalanche of sound? Will the lyrics preach, insult, rebuke?<\/p>\n

When I opened the email announcing the upcoming debut of Limestone Chorus’s album Deer Friends<\/em>*, and of “Woods & Water” in particular, I had no expectation of noise, electronica, trance. Indeed, I found almost exactly what I expected: luscious three-part harmonies overlaying and interleaved with acoustic instruments.<\/p>\n

(With the obvious exception that Gordon Lightfoot sang solo, of course, the overall effect to me strongly recalls his “Did She Mention My Name<\/a>.” Not a bad forerunner at all — again, no matter how conscious or unconscious the choice!)<\/p>\n

The band is on record<\/a> asserting that the song “describes the search for familiarity: the rediscovery of people and places who make us feel whole, safe and grounded. The song is driven through memory and nostalgia, pulling on emotional connections that shape a person.” This all comes through in the video, too, which I found oddly moving… Even though it’s not a “static” video, with a fixed image, pretty much nothing at all happens. And yet there is stuff happening, after all: the words (and their meanings and connotations) run over and through the music, and all of it runs over the visual, just like — well, just like water over and through limestone.<\/p>\n