Next month sees the release of StevieRay Latham‘s self-produced ‘Letters from Suburbia’, which completes a trilogy of EPs released over the past 18 months. This collection of deeply poetic songs follows the gritty, driving ‘Nomads Of Industrial Suburbia’ and 2019’s experimental-indie release, ‘Suburbia’.
Today, we have the pleasure of sharing his lyric video for the 8 and half minute epic ‘Dionysus Blues’. Anyone familiar with Dionysus will know him as the Greek god of wine and winemaking but there is a polarity to his nature (his father was Zeus) and he is also a god of insanity, ritual madness and religious ecstasy and often perceived as an outsider.
It seems only appropriate that art and drama were also central to the religion of Dionysus…something Latham is no stranger to, a willing canvas to absorb a broad palette of colours that include movie scores, sound-art, pre-war Jazz and existentialist literature. All of those elements seem to surface in this lyric video which finds Latham sat at his table, a portable typewriter with a glass of wine and grapes by his side. The low light silhouettes his figure like a lone beat poet, the perfect backdrop to his words which are typed across the screen (in a beautiful type font with corrections and all) to a slow-building score said to be inspired by the likes of Ennio Morricone and Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack, a combined effect that draws you in close.
It appears that he didn’t have to wait long for inspiration to strike with this song, taking just 10 minutes to write and nearly as long to unfold here – reading The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche at Art School some years back, Latham found himself drawn to the tension that unfolds between the two Greek gods: Dionysus and Apollo.
“Apollo is this God that seemed to represent a lot of Western society’s ideals to me – progress, logic, order and individuation – and then you’ve got Dionysus on the other hand, who represents intoxication, disorder, emotion, ecstasy and unity. I was up late one night after reading the book and this song just came to me fully formed.”
“Dionysus Blues” leads the listener towards a harrowing summit; its precarious path is strewn with the ghostly voices of children lost along the way, the mournful march of a mariachi-band at their last ebb, and the pervasive howl of a Hammond organ that whips like the wind at your aching bones. Haunting to its very last breath, “Dionysus Blues” is a feat not for the faint-hearted, but one which promises rewards to abound for those who make it to the top.
What’s not to love about this? Dionysus Blues is also our Song of the Day.
“Dionysus Blues” directly follows recent single “Gashouse”, with both tracks set to feature on the upcoming EP ‘Letters From Suburbia’ (out 12 March 2021) which will see Latham once again joined by his backing band: The Nomads of Industrial Suburbia.
More here: https://www.stevieraylatham.com