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┌────────┐
────┤ Info ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Artist | Willis Earl Beal
Title | Noctunes
Genre | Alternative Format | Album
Source | CDDA Time | 63:00
Label | Tender Loving Empire Store | 2015
Catalog | TLE058 Rip | 2015
Bitrate | 197 kbps Size | 93.13 MB
Freq | 44.1 kHz Encoder | Lame 3.98.4
┌────────┐
────┤ Tracks ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
01. Under You 6:04
02. Flying So Low 4:47
03. Like A Box 5:09
04. Lust 6:47
05. No Solution 3:05
06. Stay 6:22
07. Say The Words 5:23
08. Love Is All Around 5:23
09. Able To Wait 4:39
10. Survive 4:48
11. Start Over 5:24
12. 12 Midnight 5:09
┌────────┐
────┤ Notes ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
└────────┘
Chicago singer/songwriter Willis Earl Beal began his foray into the music
business by tacking hand-drawn flyers all over the greater metropolitan
area with his phone number and address. The flyers said 'My name is Willis
Earl Beal. Call me and I'll sing you a song. Write to me and I'll draw you
a picture'. Beginning around the end of the 2000s, Beal was busking in
train stations and making good on the promises of his flyers whenever the
occasional call came in. In 2009 Found Magazine graced the cover of their
seventh issue with a flyer Beal had made with a crude drawing of himself
soliciting a soulmate.
Willis Earl Beal has been through the wringer since 2013's "Nobody Knows".
He's been married, he relocated from New York to rural Washington,
divorced, moved to Portland, became homeless, and had some unruly
encounters with police. Even so, he managed to record and self-release
2014's "Experiments In Time", which delivered a glimpse of the music found
on "Noctunes", his debut for Tender Loving Empire. The booming voice of the
blues, rock, and gospel shouter of earlier records has been replaced by a
vulnerable, tender soul singer.
He's framed these 12 songs in skeletal arrangements - a keyboard and/or
acoustic guitar and sparse (when used at all) percussion. Beal has said
that these 12 tunes were written as lullabies to combat his insomnia, that
they are a concept album. Musically, it is nearly serene, almost
monochromatic. His voice is almost always silky and soft, and there isn't a
hint of his growling snarl. But the songs tell a different story. Written
near the end of his marriage and in the aftermath of divorce, they are
confessional, lost, loaded.
"Noctunes" is, even at its most hopeful, almost unbearably sad. Over the
first half Beal details his mental and emotional devastation. In "Under
You," he desperately croons 'What's in your heart/Is deeply down where the
starfish lay/Upon the ocean's ground/Even after the light from up above/Has
faded away'. On "Flying So Low" his bottoming out seems endless. The
tenderness in his singing is the voice of pain itself. In "No Solution"
(with a falsetto worthy of Marvin Gaye) and "Lust" (where fellow Chicagoan
Terry Callier's influence comes to the fore), he directly addresses the
absent one; he confesses his shortcomings, but doesn't apologize.
The album's hinges, "Stay" and "Say the Words," are searing soul songs
lyrically and vocally. In both tunes his protagonist reaffirms his love and
pleads for another chance. Beal struggles for acceptance in "Love Is All
Around," but admits 'Lost my mind/Over this one' On "Survive," backed by a
drum loop and moody synth, he admonishes himself to make it through the
suffering incurred by this situation and the world's sometimes violent
indifference, by letting it all go. One can hear ghost traces of Phil
Collins' "In the Air Tonight" in its cadence and spooky feel. Closers
"Start Over" and "Midnight" continue to hope - even in vain - for a new
beginning, leaving the listener to wonder how he'll continue to cope.
"Noctunes" is stridently focused on grief, denial, and endurance. Beal
deliberately restrains his dynamic and genre palette with slow tempos,
sparse soul settings, and subtler - yet no less expressive -- singing. For
fans who enjoyed the breadth of his earlier records, this might seem - at
least initially - a disappointment. But Beal knew exactly what he was
doing: by reining in musical diversity and production, he gave the
melancholic poetry in these songs their due. The result is not only
satisfying, but adds to the already unclassifiable depth of his artistry.
┌────────┐
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└────────┘