Steve Abel - June 2009

  by Jeff Thiessen

published: 19 / 4 / 2009

intro

In his new column 'This Metal Sky' Jeff Thiessen, in the belief that all music good and bad is personal, will be writing about the links in his own life with a new piece of music he hears each month. He begins by telling of hearing Steve Abel and the Chrysalids' 'Flax Happy' on the day he was fired.

The day the 'Flax Happy' album by Steve Abel and the Chrysalids arrived in my mailbox, I was fired from my job. This wasn’t something I saw coming, and it wasn’t the type of firing that was a sort of bittersweet relief. No, this was the kind of firing that only leaves you with anger, numbness, and anguish, usually in intermittent bursts that all seep in randomly when you want to take a break from essentially questioning the validity of, well, everything in your world. I did what pretty much any North American red-blooded male would do in the same situation; I went down to my local pub and got totally hammered. The only problem was I was canned at one in the afternoon, so by the time I stumbled out of the bar it was still very light out, thus expanding on my torment that day, since by this point, I just wanted tomorrow to you know, become today. When I staggered into my door, there was the Steve Abel record sitting on the kitchen table, as my roommate politely laid it out for me. Now, if you’re expecting this is the part where I launch into some ill-advised, sentimental rant how my first glimpse of 'Flax Happy' provided me with some arcane, esoteric connection with the album I could feel but not really explain or articulate, then you should go watch 'Donnie Darko' and be done with it. I saw 'Flax Happy' strictly as a valid time-killer until I could pass out without the sounds of kids playing Frisbee on the street providing the audible hum beyond my bedroom window. When I put it on, I was simply hoping for some sombre, brooding effort that would offer an appropriate soundtrack to my one-man drunken pity party, which by now was in full swing. If I had Urge Overkill’s 'Exit the Dragon', I’d probably just go for the safe bet and throw that in my stereo, but I could only find 'Saturation', which struck me as the exact polar opposite of what I wanted to hear that night. So I checked out the press-release on 'Flax Happy', and skimmed through the description until I saw the word ‘haunting’. Good enough for me ! That was all I needed to hear, so I threw caution into the wind, and allowed Steve Abel and the Chrysalids to infiltrate my blotto night of unemployed sorrow. At first, the gamble felt like it was paying off. The first impression of 'Flax Happy' on me seemed to be one of morbid content. It was shimmering enough to crudely connect with my inner-disillusionment, but not so of-the-moment I actually begin to think about anything other then how one arbitrary dismissal can totally stick it in and break it off. Then by the third track, 'Lonely Babylon', the mood abruptly shifted, both the record’s and mine. All of a sudden nothing seemed as comfortably numb (and clichéd) as the night had previously been, and the music was taking me places I had no interest in being at that particular moment. Crestfallen, and also a bit angry my trust has been placed in such a volatile source, I did the only other thing I could do; I put on Iggy Pop’s 'The Idiot' and drifted to sleep. The next day I awoke with doom in my heart and blood in my eyes, but I did feel a sort of gutted admiration for 'Flax Happy', as morning air and a clear brain allowed me to relish the fact the music refused to be a shoulder for me to cry on. This record is not a particularly challenging one in the traditional sense of the word, and I have great fears that it will get lumped in with Valium demographic that includes such gems as Ben Harper and Backseat Goodbye, due to the initial laid back approach of 'Flax Happy', but make no mistake, upon given a chance this will easily be one of the most perplexing and stirring efforts you will ever hear from a group that initially will probably strike you as logical choice to accompany patio beers on a sunny day. I highly doubt the industry’s mashed up assembly line will cease churning out these pseudo-folks acts that relish the challenge of having nothing to say, yet masking it through obtuse personal declarations and secret rendezvous nobody gives a shit about. While I’m not sure if Steve Abel is aware of just how dangerously close his proximity is to those other god-awful acts, much of the music on 'Flax Happy', if not all, defiantly distances the group from such knee-jerk comparisons. I honestly don’t care if it’s a conscious effort, or just a natural progression, but either way, this is extremely meaningful music that must be evaluated like all great, irresolute music that never really arrives, instead drifting around at a pace that is simultaneously comforting, yet exigent. Much of 'Flax Happy' seems to be centered around total and unrestrained indecision, and truth be told, most of it is about a girl. Well one girl, but in many instances Abel’s appropriation of other girls based on what he went through/is going through with the main girl. In a way, I’m constantly reminded of the Led Zeppelin song 'Babe I’m Gonna Leave You', in which the song’s protagonist constantly wavers back and forth between permanence with some unnamed broad, and forever absence. It was a rare break from macho-solidarity from the English behemoths, and remains one of my favourite cuts by them, and you could say that theme is expanded on, extensively, throughout the entirety of 'Flax Happy'. There are two songs with just a woman’s name in the title ('Sally' and 'Deborah'), but it’s almost grossly obvious each song just represents different facets of the girl of the hour. Sample lyric of 'Sally' : “I wish you knew me Sally and would say it aloud that rain so steady is broken now” Now, consider the lyric of 'Deborah' : “All I have are these words storm battered birds to still/steal/win your heart again” Abel is a broken man, so for him it’s really tough to conceptualize this fallen angel as a full-fledged representation of someone who used to occupy such a vast space in his world. It’s easier to think of her in fragments, a sum of parts, but the sum is never truly examined. As quickly as all this could have deteriorated into a cookie-cutter, mopey, breakup-record piece of shit, it refuses to be some lame attempt at catharsis, which nearly always comes at the expense of any listener with brain cells in the double digits. Steve is bummed out, this much is obvious, but musically the album is constantly soaring to new, extraordinary heights, and truly, confusion is the only thing that makes sense throughout. But back to Steve. Abel is well aware of the simplicity he craves regarding the sudden rush of complication his life is now riddled with, and the struggle with this newfound change in his life. When I got canned, I heard every locker-room pep talk you can imagine, with most of them revolving around a monumental life-change sometimes being a positive move in the right direction; it’s just hard for me to see it at this instant. Perhaps. Perhaps they are right and this will prove to one of those pivotal cornerstones in my life that I always will wish happened sooner in my life, but there’s also the chance that it sucks on every level. There’s no point in dwelling on Option B, because it just leads to one wanting to reverse the irreversible, but on 'Flax Happy' Steve has the balls and courage to examine everything, past, present, and most importantly, future. There is an inner-struggle going on here, and as noble as his intentions are, there’s got to be a collision of guttural emotions before anything can really be resolved, and the more I listen to this album, it’s this struggle within the grand confines of whatever the hell the future holds for him that is the guts of 'Flax Happy'. Maybe all this comes down to Steve not knowing what he wants, or how he got to where he is, but this is a process of aggression, not retreat, the plunging down the abyss and considering it the entire way down. In 'Crushed Ants' Abel sings: “Up there in your star spangled sky with your one half shut dying eye I hope you die a little sooner birds feed your guts unto la luna My love is true my love is only for you I hope the sun comes up tomorrow in this living land of love and sorrow” See, the proof is in the pudding. There are no escape routes on 'Flax Happy' and try as we might, we’ll probably never truly be free from ourselves.

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