#90 Bowerbirds

Let’s call it serendipity. We make lists of bands we’re interested in, we schedule shootings, we say no to some requests or suggestions. For some of them we have to go through so many different people, and for others we discuss it directly and next thing we know, it’s done in two shakes (or we mess up completely, like that day when Björk was suntanning near a swimming pool and she ran away). During this process, some people disappear, in spite of all the affection we have for them. This is what happened to the Bowerbirds, authors of a beautiful folk song, originally dug from Said The Gramophone. In the meantime, they disappeared from our to-do-list without us paying much attention, and then came back on it from the bottom. The reasons ? A shooting that had been cancelled, Sean Moeller’s praises, and a show on the very same evening. Vincent Moon was so staggered that once the show was over, he immediately talked the band into wandering in New York streets the day after. The old school manner, just like it used to happen at the beginning of the Take away shows.

Instead of streets, they got going in a candy shop, in the midst of a jumble of colorful plastic wrappers. Amongst them, Phil Moore’s beard softly hovering, and him pitching his song to us as if nothing. Listen to him carefully: he doesn’t declaim, neither does he whisper; he doesn’t control anything but, still, he stands out. He lets the vowels drawl, he’s telling a story. When he talks about mountains, we can picture them perfectly above us, even from where we stand, amongst the sugar. When his two sidekicks join him, and they harmonize with each other, and tell about a fall on the knees, we’re touching our kneecaps. To reassure ourselves.

And there’s also this huge drum. One could think it’s only anecdotal. Just a simple accessory. But look at it carefully: it is huge, completely irrelevant, out of proportion. But he’s being played very gently, softly, with the touch of a fastidious craftman who knows that everything depends on the detail. The sound is broad, complex and discreet as it should be.

Then, we only see the streets through the windows of a car. In a passenger cell we could think is too narrow. All the more because our friend the giant drum was still there. You and me, we would be cramped. But Phil and his guitar, Beth and her drum, Mark and his violin: not at all. Almost the opposite. All there is is warmth, a warmth which blooms thanks to the promiscuity of imbricated bodies, in the discomfort of the places where we are stacked altogether.

Glancing through the window, it looks like the Bowerbirds are the only one to be enjoying that warmth. It feels like the streets are as cold and lonesome as they’ve always been. That passers-by never look up, that none of them is able to detect the presence of this little band, right there, at their fingertips. Of course we’re wrong: as soon as the driver corners, we notice couples holding hands, people walking together, people with eyes wide open. They’ll only get a glimpse of us, but that will make us feel that the Bowerbirds are at their place, there, in the streets of the Lower East Side.

New York is the queen of perspectives. You know it the first time you slide down its avenues, as soon as you see its towers, and pace its narrow streets. And Vincent Moon knows it. This third video is about street musicians in front of a tiled wall. It is about cars passing by, passers-by sometimes indifferent, sometimes curious, it’s about the big Liquor Store sign above them, it’s about the pounding of a city.

This is also a tribute to Saul Leiter, the major big apple photographer. Just like in his work, we don’t really know where we are, where we’re looking from, what could possibly stand up between us and them. A window ? For sure. A café’s tables ? Without any doubt. Just like in his work, we have the feeling to be discovering something mysterious, honestly beautiful, in a very familiar scene.

We get back to the warmth that was spreading in the car, and which is now seemingly forming a bubble around them. A bubble growing bigger and bigger as the shot widens.

Until then, the Bowerbirds had made us walk in a sort of melancholic and blissful torpor, like when we wander in the sun and time’s on our side. A bit like in an neverending story which would take place at the end of summer. They must have been thinking that even in the most perfect New York pastoral, there’s a moment where we should stand up and dance. Thanks to the wine, or maybe just because we had cumulated so much joy that it should go away like a big firecracker. It was the right time for "In Our Talons", a gold nugget you can find on the EP Danger At Sea.

This time, the singing was once again perfect. Our guy showed once again he’s a born teller, a modern bard pacing the tarmac to spread his word. But I have the feeling that now you should pay attention to the young lady. You’ve seen her since the beginning, you’ve heard her voice in counterpoint. But here, here you notice the subtle undulation of her gait, the way she grabs her accordion like she’s never done it before, moving along and be as one with it. She dances, almost, it’s as if. As if she was about to do so, as if if we moved toward her, we would be able to grab her and waltz until we fall from exhaustion. Burdened with a huge instrument, she’s sensual, though. It’s all about details, anecdotes, once again. In the end, it’s all about what the Take away shows try to document: the small difference, the trifle where beauty hides.

(Translated by Nora)