Northstream Music
Monte Northstrom : After All... (Can,2008)***
Songs and stories of people and places (2000) was one of the first albums I reviewed on my site. Back then and in those days, I was, while marking new directions and preferences, loaded by expectations, and therefore couldn’t find the comfort and perhaps maturity to really see what there was to offer outside certain scopes and taste, and also could not find many words to describe it. I just didn’t feel the same magic from Ptarmigan, felt the influences of bar performances where people won’t give attention to all, with loss of the previously felt dreamy atmosphere, formed by circumstances and multiple talents, and so, for me it felt as if the creative inspirations suffered from it.
Eight years later, Monte came up with a resume of his own thoughts and feelings during the years of Ptarmigan, before and after, until now, and with this release deliberately wanted to show the connection within his life with all that. It gave me the best chance to feel what he really wanted to say, made in best circumstances and fine fine cooperative musicians (like Peter Gustavsson, from Sweden from whom I have heard years ago some demo of acid folk inspired songs). The song titles are translated into 10 languages (including Dutch).
The album is split into two parts, starting with "After All... Songs of Fate & Mortality", which is said to be about some life & death experiences. It is a song cycle about the loss of a relationship and the memory of some unaccomplished moments from the past, daydreaming on its unity, and trying to reach a future meeting point beyond eternity, while taking certain metaphors which reveal that such a moment will increase the awareness of who we really are, as a new meeting point of consciousness. In the context of the record sleeve, a native Indian paining in the form of a shield or drum, it gives this song cycle a kind shamanic wish and cry to transcend all this, but on a normal human level.
The songs are performed and well produced with a full band arrangement (which is fundamentally guitars, bass, and drums, with some additional instruments like soprano sax, harmonica, keyboards..). This gives these songs a rather well arranged rock feeling. Monte’s enjoyable voice sounds especially most terrific, and with certain surprising melodic variety, on “Precipice”.
The second part, "Ptarmigan & the Waiting" is based upon contemporary of previously un-produced recordings of previous groups, Ptarmigan and The Waiting. Four of these tracks, the best part, should have been added to the original Ptarmigan LP. We hear a moody improvisation on 12-string with drums, bass, soprano-sax and harmonica, followed by a song related with the seashore perspective and the thoughts provoked by the place. I guess the tracks are re-recorded for this album. “Song of The East” has a small segment of strange singing adapted like on Pharoah Sanders “Tembi”, but of course in a compact song-related folk-rock context. The style of these songs fit best with the first cycle, and unites mostly the song based context of Ptarmigan with the new ideas, with mellotron and organ and guitars more as an arranged, texturing background, and a small, a more down to earth improvised part (on “deep green”), enjoyable.
