Raymond Byron
Bond Wire Cur
As usual, the introduction for this piece had been swimming around in my head for at least a month before I could find the time and focus to write about this album. Bond Wire Cur presents another installment in ESP's Drive to Revive Weird Rock, which has resulted in the past year with releases by artists like Bridge of Flowers and ATTITUDE! (click here for details). With offerings like that, this Drive must be encouraged and followed.
Upon putting Raymond Byron's newest release on the turntable, he reminded me of ...someone. That laconic drawl, the simple musical setting (acoustic guitar, some piano) and a gift for a compelling narrative from which you don't want to turn away. He's an original, but there's a familiarity to him.
Then it hit me - he's in a league with Vic Chesnutt. That late great singer had a lot going for him - a balance of rough and beautiful, mean and sweet, and so poetic. Lord Byron has that too.
But before I could sing his praises, he took on another quality similar to that of Chesnutt: He died on July 30, 2022 at the age of 41. A cause of death has not been revealed and I don't mean to imply that he died in the same manner. I only want to mourn the fact that the world has lost another gifted performer.
Raymond Bryon Magic Raposa has had a rather long and fruitful career, prior to his ESP debut. He recorded several albums under the moniker Castanets, all of them on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label. In addition to Stevens, he has worked with St. Vincent's Annie Clark and Deer Tick's John McCauley. Clearly I was a bit late to this musical party, but it was still in full swing.
Many songs on Bond Wire Cur last less than two minutes. Moods changes quickly between tracks, from pure acoustic folk to country to some psychedelic hybrid of both of them. A marimba appears out of nowhere during "I Don't Captain" [sic] and it fits in with the acoustic guitar perfectly. Strings appear on "Benediction Mountain," adding to the sanctified feeling of the words.
No less than ten artists are credited on the back of the album, though no musical or vocal credits are attributed to them. So the plethora of women who harmonize with Byron shall remain something of a mystery. The best examples come in "Wings of a Dove" which sounds like members of the Carter Family working with Sun Studio recording techniques, creating pure reverb by leaving the monitors on while recording and creating an echoey feedback. (We did the same thing in college radio.)
The patchwork aspect and ever changing dynamics also recall the better moments of '90s era Guided By Voices, when those shifts were part of the charm on an album. The difference here is that a 1:53 track is a full blown song delivered with brevity, not merely an idea that could've been more. It all holds together as an album, delivering 20 songs in about 38 minutes.
All that can be attributed to wit that Byron puts forth in his lyrics. He twists a closing time cliché into a fresh idea ("You don't have to stay/but you can't go home"). "Before What's Left of Our Minds Go" is a wry but charming love song of sorts with a protagonist who wants to live life to the fullest while he still knows what he's doing. The title track stretches out the longest - five minutes - beginning with some random ideas before switching to a second movement where Byron croons (with a delayed double-tracked vocal) over one lonely minor chord that never gets old.
"Next Trick" ends each verse with a play on a line from a magician's act, the final one being, "For my next trick, I will disappear." It's hard not to look at some of these lines as possible clues that Byron knew the end of the line was coming. But if that's the case, there's nothing we can do now. Nothing, that is, but enjoy what he left for us. And then start to explore the back catalog.
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