22 Apr 2018

New Horizons: the story's the thing

From New Horizons, 5:00 pm on 22 April 2018

William Dart explores a number of story-telling songs from Joni Mitchell, Chris Thile, and Jim White.

Chris Thile: Thanks for Listening; cover image

Chris Thile: Thanks for Listening; cover image Photo: Nonesuch Records

If the story is indeed the thing, in song as in literature, then Joni Mitchell's song 'Nathan La Franeer', from her very first album, must be the ultimate exemplar.

Alongside Joni Mitchell, we survive a coach ride from hell, with the eponymous driver, who shows us the dark, dark side of bitter and twisted. It’s a confrontation that lingers into the instrumental playout, as harmonies oscillate between major and minor and David Crosby makes angsty siren sounds with his electric guitar.

Story and song are, and have been for centuries, deeply connected. One remembers Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio programme, Prairie Home Companion, which made so much of both.

Mandolin maestro Chris Thile joined the show in 2016, and one of his tasks was to write and perform a weekly song. Thile’s something of a favourite on New Horizons — we’ve played him giving Bach a swing with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, as well as leading his nouveau bluegrass band, Punch Brothers.

Now, his latest album, Thanks for Listening, has him gathering up a selection of his Prairie Home songs and plucking them from the ether for the CD market.

There is a story of sorts in 'Elephant in the Room', but it’s also a hilarious study in excruciating claustrophobia. As much so as being in that coach that transported Joni Mitchell from confusion to the plane.

With Thile, it’s a horror peculiar to Thanksgiving and other holiday celebrations, being locked in with the family, without enough to talk about and — thanks to fermentation — a good supply of soul-soothing libations. Not that the social agonies that ensue are allowed to impinge at all on the sleek almost pointillist precision of this premier house band

By some sort of wondrous serendipity, Chris Thile’s residency with Prairie Home Companion coincided with the build-up to the American election and continued into Trump’s rather fraught regnum.

Inevitably songs were touched and inspired by the history that was happening around him. And you can hear a clutch of them on this new Thanks for Listening album.

For instance, the scrumptious song, Falsetto. It may be written and delivered in the usual filigree chambergrass style, but there’s some discreetly savage political commentary in its furrows. It’s here that we meet the tweeting President and consider, in view of his well-documented rants, what he might have thought of left-field rock singers, with girly falsettos.

Incidentally, Chris Thile is only too happy to deliver just that ... and exquisitely.

Chris Thile’s new outing demands intensive listening to reap all the subtleties of words and music as he spins his stories. And so too do the songs of fellow American Jim White, whose latest album seems to throw up a rather caustic image of the darker side of America in its three-word title: Waffles, Triangles and Jesus.

The many talents of Jim White, both literary and musical, came out in a recent interview where, within just a few paragraphs, he was manically dropping names ... from musicians Tom Waits and David Byrne to film director Mike Nichols.

He offered to explain the title of the new album in that interview but it didn’t really eventuate. He got as far as confessing to be fascinated by, some years previously, watching Tom Waits chatting up a homeless New York street musician and somehow ... well, somehow out of this, came a collection of songs under the name of Waffles, Triangles and Jesus.

But maybe the Waits spirit is there, in music, recessed into the sonic murk emanating from the back alleys of one of the more approachable songs from White’s mosaic-like collection. It's a ballad of regrets, renewal and redemption titled “Wash Away a World” 

Listen to all these songs and more by clicking on the "Listen" link at the top of the page.

Music Details

'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)

'Nathan La Franeer' (Mitchell) – Joni Mitchell
Song to a Seagull
(Reprise)

'Elephant in the Room' (Thile) – Chris Thile
Thanks for Listening
(Nonesuch)

'Falsetto' (Thile) – Chris Thile
Thanks for Listening
(Nonesuch)

'A Perfect Day to Chase Tornados' (White) – Jim White
Wrong-Eyed Jesus!
(Luaka Bop)

'Wash Away a World' (White) – Jim White
Waffles, Triangles & Jesus
(Loose Music)

'Sweet Bird of Mystery' (White) – Jim White
Waffles, Triangles & Jesus
(Loose Music)

'Earnest T Bass at Last Finds the Woman of his Dreams' (White) – Jim White
Waffles, Triangles & Jesus
(Loose Music)

'Long, Long Day' (White) – Jim White
Waffles, Triangles & Jesus
(Loose Music)

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