Again within the late ’90s, Marc Ribot pitched an early model of Map Of A Blue Metropolis to a label identified for “brutal loss of life metallic bands and puke-splattered poets.” It was rejected as “too darkish.” He tinkered with it for a couple of decade, recording new variations with the late Hal Willner producing.
“However by then, I’d grown connected to the sooner variations, and I advised Hal and my long-suffering supervisor that the studio variations had been too slick,” says Ribot, a genre-bending guitarist and composer identified for his collaborations with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Neko Case and others. “Time handed, and someplace alongside the road, I misplaced the multi-tracks to the unique variations—and in 2020, we misplaced Hal. However I all the time knew I needed these songs out on the earth.”
Then Ribot met Bay Space alt-folk singer, songwriter and producer Ben Greenberg. “I knew he was the correct particular person to hatch these unusual birds,” Ribot says of his first-ever vocal album. “Due to mysterious applied sciences permitting Ben to de-mix/remix the sooner tracks, and due to his good mixes of fabric from the Willner periods, we now supply them to your listening pleasure.”
Ribot takes us by every observe under.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Elizabeth”
“Solely those that have seen the ‘pure’ cycle of life from each ends perceive simply how unsuitable nature actually is.”
2) “For Celia”
“Primarily based on conversations with pal and documentary filmmaker Celia Lowenstein, the music paperwork the impossibility of becoming human disasters—from the intimate to the grand historic—into our redemptive narratives.”
3) “Say My Identify”
“A falsetto R&B Psyche and Eros—electrified by Greg Lewis’ Hammond.”
4) “Daddy’s Journey To Brazil”
“A hungover post-punk echo of Jobim’s well-known ‘Wave,’ importing the ennui of a late-capitalist touring musician into that tropicalismo paradise.”
5) “Map Of A Blue Metropolis”
“The music describes waking up on an elevated prepare platform someplace in New York Metropolis—perhaps Coney Island—and never figuring out the place you might be. The title got here from my daughter, who, when she was seven, liked drawing difficult maps. Someday, she labored solely in blue magic marker. I requested why, and this was her response: “It’s not a blue map. It’s a map of a blue metropolis.”
6) “Dying Of A Narcissist”
“‘I all the time believed that, within the love of my life, I’d discover my reflection.’ Some individuals get it unsuitable proper from the beginning.”
7) When The World’s On Fireplace
“The Carter Household recorded this music in 1930. It’s important to admit they had been approach forward of the curve. I added a couple of lyrics to make it protected for agnostics.”
8) “Someday Jailhouse Blues”
“‘Typically I lay down my wrath, like I lay my physique down.’ A type of Buddhist blues from somebody who noticed America extra clearly than it noticed itself—and tried to reply with gentleness.”
9) “Optimism Of The Spirit”
“This can be a piece we cooked up within the studio in 2008—an ambient improv of mine sliced, diced, spiced and scrambled into François Lardeau’s good remix and percussion omelet. The astute listener might discover that it has nothing to do stylistically with the remainder of the album. However typically that’s a great factor.”
See Marc Ribot reside.
