Jessy Greene s grand conspiracy
Wednesday 12 February @ 15:21:44 |
 by P.J. Morel
What’s central in music? Drum beats, bass lines, a clutch guitar riff; everyone’s got their own theory about what carries the weight of a song, where the emotional center lies. Producers will talk at great length about their theory of song craft, what they think is primary. None of them ever thinks it’s the strings. No: even though strings have been a part of pop music since before the rise of rock ’n’ roll, people invariably treat them as musical garnish. The meat, it would seem, is elsewhere.
Viovoom
Jessy Greene knows better, though. She’s laid down enough string parts for the likes of the Jayhawks, The Geraldine Fibbers and Wilco to know that the soaring, heart-scratch sound of muted violins can make even the hardest rocker swoon. She knows how a viola can start a chain reaction of sorts: how the bow, scraping across the strings, will excite them into motion; the push and pull of air will vibrate the diaphragm of a microphone that’s making a recording, one that will get listened to by scores of people. Somewhere, somebody sighs. Strings aren’t just a nice “something extra” to add to a song: they’re the whirling emotional powerhouse at the romance factory of pop music.
With her first solo recording, Blue Sky, she’s given them top billing. Layered together, lacing in and out of taught drum loops and staccato bass lines, Greene’s string parts tend to occupy the part of the sonic spectrum more often given over to chordal instruments like keyboards and guitars. It’s a working method born of her rather unique musical training—at least for a pop musician. “I was trained on violin since I was four,” Greene explains, “so for me it’s all about melody. I’ve really been working to figure out the other side of music—the rhythm and the body, the chordal thing, which I think is secondary to me.”
Working between her violin and a piano or guitar, Greene transforms melodies and harmonies into fully-fledged compositions. “It’s hard to come up with a basic chord structure with a violin. Even if I come up with melodies on a violin, I have to go to another instrument to really find out what I’m doing.” Although she’s a pro on her chosen instrument, Greene approaches the guitar with some naiveté. “Sometimes that can create a weird thing, because I’m not real good about chords on guitar, so kinda try to make it up. Sometimes it turns out to work really well, because they don’t have anything to do with each other, but they still work together, the chords and the melody.”
You can hear some of that disjointedness on the album’s title track: as the bass burbles away on the bottom, high violins outline the rest of the chords. Greene’s voice floats somewhere in between, sometimes harmonizing, other times clashing with the accompaniment. When the chorus arrives, the elements come together in soaring, lovelorn consonance.
What makes Blue Sky even more compelling, as a recording, is its loose, off-the-cuff feel. Stings tend to be the hallmark of big, carefully plotted production. In the case of Blue Sky, however, they became part of the songs as they were being written. “I recorded the album primarily by myself on the computer, and it kinda started as demos.” Working on her iBook, Greene would record some violin parts just by leaning over and playing into the computer’s built-in microphone.
In fact, once she decided to ready the songs for release, she found she liked the original performances so much that she didn’t want to re-record them in the studio. “I tried to go into fancy studios and sing on a nice microphone, but for some reason the performance never seemed to be as good as the one I did in the original with the crappy microphone. So I spent tons of time trying to make the crappy microphone sound like a good microphone and just kept the old performance.”
In the process, Greene enlisted the help of her old friends and band mates to flesh out the recordings. “[The project] fell together because I share a rehearsal space with Iffy and Soul Asylum. When I started working, I started by watching Tommy [Merkl, of Iffy]. Then I started working by myself, and it was sort of whoever was around.” Merkl helped out with drum loops and production, Kraig Joh nson laid down some guitar, Mark Mallman played keys, and Dave Pirner got a chance to show off his flugelhorn skills—not a bad roster by any standards. Greene’s live band, Viovoom, helped with much of the rest.
Working with those musicians changed the music in interesting ways: to begin with they provided Greene with some amazing performances that work with the compositions. But as often, those collaborators helped shape the songs, too. “I love working with other people because I think it takes me out of that realm of constantly thinking about melody,” Greene says. “Like working with Tommy [Merkl] on ‘Blue Sky’: I had a totally different concept of how the verse was going to be. The chorus was always the same, but he took the song and added this cool drum loop, and it forced me to re-sing the song with a totally different melody.”
Greene calls the resulting sound “Ameritronica,” a blend of the raw, pure-sung melodies of country and the churning, sampled beats of electronic music. Greene’s violin playing, moving between the wolrds of fiddle music and disco strings, helps hold everything together.
Songs like “Blue Sky” and “Grand Conspiracy” are bound to catch on with audiences and independent radio listeners, and Blue Sky is a confident and thoroughly listen-able album all around. So what’s the queen of pop strings looking to do next (besides playing a whole lotta shows)? “I kinda think that the rap of Minneapolis, the hip-hop scene, could use a little of my string playin’, too. I think some cool disco strings in the back of some of that hip-hop stuff could be killer.” Consider this your heads-up, Atmoshphere.
Jessy Greene and Viovoom are having a CD release party for Blue Sky this Fri., Feb. 14 at the 400 Bar with help from The Hang Ups and Rhombus. 8 p.m. 21+. 400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-332-2903.
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