Just over eighty-eight years ago, at the outset of an unprecedented era of American economic prosperity later known as the “Roaring Twenties,” a small group of Italian-American anarchists detonated a horse-drawn cart, loaded with one-hundred pounds of high explosives, on the doorstep of financial giant J.P. Morgan & Co. The resulting explosion killed thirty and wounded many more. More jarring than the loss of life though, was the deep-seeded populist rage exposed by the Wall Street Bombing. A violent backlash on Wall Street, the very heart of American prosperity, unveiled the violent discontent concealed by America’s swelling wealth and progress, built largely on the bare backs of wage slaves, child laborers, and struggling working class debtors. It’s with an allusion to this violent moment in history, titled ‘Bomb the Stock Exchange,’ that Matt Elliot concludes Howling Songs (Ici d’ailleurs, 2008), his latest album in a trilogy of dark, anachronistic songwriting.
Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about the cruel grind—that it gave her the gift of insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor—she fell silent. (Upton Sinclair, The Jungle)
Previous Matt Elliott albums have managed to inexplicably capture in music, as Charles Dickens and Upton Sinclair have in writing, the textures, imagery and struggles of the Industrial Revolution’s urban working class. Drinking Songs, Elliot’s first fully realized songwriting album, was remarkably powerful, to the point of really affecting the listener with its heart-wrenching, mournful tone. Its drunken melodies felt composed in a salty harbor pub, tinged with the steam, grit and stinking sweat of a broken spirit. Failing Songs, Elliot’s follow up, extended the emotional palette to some degree, notably the electric guitars and furious Gypsy whirlwinds from “Broken Bones,” “Desamparade” and “Good Pawn;” in the end though, Failing still sounded too similar to Drinking Songs to really distinguish itself.
“There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and ridicule—not by prison and persecution, if they should come—not by any power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was, or is, or ever can be created.” (Upton Sinclair, The Jungle)
Howling Songs still contains much of the familiar introspective songwriting so prevalent in earlier Elliott records. Slavic, Iberian and more generic European pub, harbor and wandering influences are prevalent once more, again serving as the eerie, restless life animating Matt’s timeless songwriting. While Ici d’ailleurs calls Howling the trilogy’s most introspective record yet, it’s precisely the broader range of emotions and hues that distinguishes this record from its predecessors. “The Kübler-Ross Model,” the twelve minute album opener, is an early example of this new flexibility; in fact, the track title itself is even an allusion to the cycle of human emotions displayed in response to a tragedy or loss (i.e., denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). The track’s lyrics, lamenting sorrowfully the passing of an unnamed loved one, and the feelings of helplessness and confusion in mourning, occupy only two-thirds; howling, alongside a ferocious orchestra of electric guitar, drums and flurried Gypsy acoustic guitar bring ‘Kübler-Ross’ to a rousing conclusion, foreshadowing the album’s newfound aggression, and channeling that anarcho-socialist outrage that fueled much of the early 20th century working class backlash. It’s this frightening collision of introspection and anger that distinguishes Howling from Matt’s previous albums.
Incidentally enough, the aforementioned ‘Bomb the Stock Exchange’ is the album’s finest example of Howling Songs‘ emotional complexity. The lyrics are characteristically introspective, a predictable soliloquy of personal anguish — “When all of your memories are sad / Forgotten the dreams that you had / Friends are a lie, who don’t care if you live or die / What to do but cry?” Elliott’s upbeat, veritably sunny delivery though, and dark, humorous closing lines — “If you’ll top yourself anyway / Why not bomb the stock exchange?” — contrasts wonderfully with the trilogy’s overwhelming emotion, adding some depth to what could have been a relatively shallow affair, and casting a shadow of self-critical humor on the whole mopey affair.
While much of the album still mimics territory already covered exhaustively in Drinking and Failing, it’s Howling’s comparative abundance of fresh ideas that leaves a lasting impression. Aside from the opener and closer, ‘A Broken Flamenco’ is another of the album’s standout, and the finest example of Howling’s memorable aggression. The lyrics are brief, but defiant — “When faced with a flame / We’ll turn our face / What use recoiling from an infernal rage / We’ll burn as we wait” — and alongside the screams of Elliot’s electric guitar and relentless pace of the acoustic guitar, ‘Flamenco’ sounds like a fitting tribute to or representation of the explosive, uncontrollable energy of the angry mobs worldwide that pried a share of the American dream from the country’s greedy power brokers. As our modern financial markets come tumbling down, with the wreckage falling largely on the backs of our working class and middle class, this mix of genuine outrage and self-deprecatig humor is uniquely tuned to these trying times, increasingly known as the second Gilded Age.
Put together — from the familiar songs of introspective contemplation, rousing populist rage with hints of cynical humor — Howling Songs is simply a brilliant conclusion to Matt Elliott’s already spectacular series of songwriting releases. The album is available late October from Ici d’ailleurs on cd and, for the first time, on vinyl. Darla Records looks to be distributing the album exclusively in the United States; in Europe, the label itself would likely be the best source, while Cargo Records looks to be distributing copies in the UK. The 2LP comes in a cardboard gatefold sleeve, on clear 180g vinyl, with two lovely inserts.
Bombing the Stock Exchange & A Broken Flamenco
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Beggar’s dog – Hoboken (Library of Congress)
Crowd of strikers menacing strike-breakers, Lawrence, Mass. (Library of Congress)
Mendiant balayeur-Angleterre/Londres (George Eastman House)
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