The Revolution Was Stunned: Quick, The Seedy Seeds to the Rescue
Any proficient rock gardener knows even though the soil is buried under 10,000 leagues of snow, you should not stop preparing for the thawing season. Whether that means combing the racks of a local record store for the perfect anthem to the sun’s return or whetting your trusty till, preparation for the spring cannot lapse solely because the winter has defeated your will to live (and it probably has by now if you’re within frequency of this show’s broadcast).
Resiliency, my friends, is what you need. Certainly, local druggists may carry chemical cocktails or high-powered heat lamps you can stare into for hours a day. But this seems expensive or time-consuming or a bit eccentric for the rock gardener. No, friends, resiliency actually comes to us in the form of a Cincinnati-based band called The Seedy Seeds.
The band’s name conjures up some misfit Sesame Street character who never saw the light of day, but the music is anything but puerile. On 2009’s "Count the Days," TSS fly across the wintry void like banjo-strapped superheros, spreading polyphonic cheer and gyrating, glitchy folk wisdom that sounds like the kind of music Pete Seeger would play had he traded licks with a supercomputer containing the algorithm to Joan Osborne’s soul. There is a simplicity about their sound that can come only from a musician approaching their instrument after a long void, or doing so for the first time. In TSS’s case, it is the latter. They formed the band as an experiment in which they’d learn to play instruments they owned but didn’t yet know how to play. The pleasing result is in old-fashioned, collective jouissance.
Opener “Winter 04” is actually a tidy foyer, hinting at the marriage between electro-footing and backwoodsy Appalachian folk that carries throughout the album. The seatbelts really come off, however, on “The Push,” which rockets up your spine like a the sudden, isolating recollection that you really are still, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, a decent, human being. It’s like an old friend calling, or better yet, showing up at your door. With more of your friends. Do NOT listen to this song before sleep. You will stay awake for at least an hour. It’s that good.
Rock gardeners may be most interested in “My Roots Go Down,” a quasi-hymnal that turns into a boot-stomping disco. I loathe to do this, but for all you Avatar fans who found the intersection of spirituality and electromagnetic science in the Navi’s big old tree will find a similar meshing of synthetic and organic worlds when female vocalist Margaret cantors “My roots go down to the earth” over a fuzzy sea of gospel-shouting exigency.
It’s a mesmerizing tonic for winter blues that TSS has concocted. Although it likely holds up just as well in May or August. The winter will stay with us for a while. In a few weeks that futile groundhog will emerge to sub-zero temperatures and return to his subterranean hideaway. But, at least, with TSS, you know have some fortification—in addition to antifreeze and heavy anti-depressants.
The rural revolution goes down to the earth.
Cousin Christopher writes about music and plays the keys for the Rock Garden Tour Family Band.
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