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Remora
- Songs I Sing
Digipak CD 2007 | NPR 05
2 Color Letterpress
13 tracks | 16 minutes | 1 video | Track Listing:
Half -birthday
Job 39
I never had a home
We will fall
Chickadee
Sores
Mason Jar
These Days
Lungs
I Called Your Mom
Motherless Child
Gladness Song
Heartworms
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Songs I Sing is a perfectly descriptive title for this collection, as that's what's on it. Its genesis was the songs Remora (Brian John Mitchell) would find himself singing a cappella on-stage,
to fill time while switching instruments or changing a guitar string. He took these songs and recorded them, mostly in a house but also, in a couple cases, in a hotel room and as a voicemail message. Strung all together like this, they form a strange and alluring animal:
a demonstration of how disorienting yet comforting one voice singing can be. Some resemble the quickly written, straight-from-the-head songs of a child ("Half-Birthday", "Sores"), others reverent hymns ("We Will Fall", which structurally resembles a prayer but lyrically
more of a confessional letter). There's some element of folk tradition in these too, no matter how humorously or jokingly it's conveyed. (No surprise, then, when he sings "Motherless Child"). He sings sometimes in a Townes Van Zandt-style troubadour's voice ("I Called Your Mom"),
sometimes the same way he sings Remora's usual song-drones, sometimes demonic ("Heartworms"), and sometimes in a wicked-fast, odd way (the shortest songs, generally). All in all, this album comes off like a joke/experiment, but it's also hard to shake, resembling as it does
the ghosts of voices past, strung together as one. Think of exorcisms, of spirits singing through people, but also those goofy little ditties we all sing to our loved ones, in the moment. – dave heaton
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