The Dead Tongues – Transmigration Blues
Psychic Hotline – 26 June 2020
People can wander around in the desert for years without ever leaving home or you can tour the country and still feel lost and forsaken. Those experiences inform The Dead Tongues new disc, Transmigration Blues. With a restless spirit, Ryan Gustafson has travelled the back roads of America as a guitarist for Phil Cook and Hiss Golden Messenger. Solidly tinged with a crumbling dream in his rearview mirror, Gustafson views the human impact affecting both our crushed dreams and our haunted soul.
Trawling through the baggage of his own life, sifting through the wreckage to find rewards, Peaceful Ambassador serves as a starting point to his journey. Amidst the softly strummed acoustic guitars, contrasting with gentle electric lines, The Dead Tongues speak of personal changes and their toll, “Crossed that great wide ocean solitude/ingrate I became.” The lens that Gustafson uses is not rose coloured; his failures are laid bare.
There’s a mournful edge to the music of Transmigration Blues. Though 6 minutes long, gentle acoustic licks seam unable to weather the storm clouds that approach. The song ambles to a conclusion with strings and keyboards pulling out a note of positivity from the prevailing downward arc.
With the help of Mountain Man on backing vocals, Déjà Vu harkens back to both Robin Pecknold’s Fleet Foxes and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with a harmonic solo that is a dead ringer for Neil. The song revisits the classic mannerisms of the past yet somehow remains freshly minted. Lyrically, the second verse tells you all you need to know, “The sky is crowded/with a million lights just trying to get through a darkness/and find a way through.”
Sometimes when you close your eyes you flash on moments from your past. Such is the case with Nothingness and Everything. “Storm cloud out on the borderline/Some kind of plastic Christ.” The song ambles along until a final solo that sounds like the ghost of Roddy Frame shredding the end of the Loaded version of Van Halen’s Jump.
There’s a spiritual emptiness inhabiting the edges of this music. Song To The Void takes you right out to that edge. Just as you begin to look over and contemplate stepping off, synthesizers gently pull you back, a moment of redemption before you take off on the Road To Heaven. As the guitars strum and fiddles play a mournful melody, Gustafson sighs as his breath gives out, “Come on let me down/Put me in a cloud/Littering the road to heaven.”
The Dead Tongues speak volumes on Transmigration Blues, with their flaws clearly exposed. Despite the burdens laid down, there are still measures of hope left to be found.
Transmigration Blues is out now on Psychic Hotline, a Durham, NC based imprint releasing music from Bowerbirds, Rosenau & Sanborn, Phil Cook, The Dead Tongues, and others.
https://www.thedeadtongues.com/
Photo Credit: Hunter Savoy Jaffe