Anderson Cale

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Jesse Cale ( formerly Cale ) is an artist that has been on my radar since he was performing under the parenthetical name.  Though we didn’t meet that night, I saw Jesse play for the first and yet-only time in Wilmington, Ohio, at the Autobahn Electric Pop Music Festival of 2007.  He was playing two keyboards, shouting some of his songs into a megaphone, pushing for as much dancing as possible, and looking like he was really enjoying himself.

Oh, and he was sixteen years old.

When I ordered my first batch of Cale discs, he sent me three CD-Rs with white stickers on them, a trio of lo-fi electronic recordings that promised something, but didn’t quite deliver, if only for sound quality.  The kind of person I am, though, I could appreciate the effort and dedication; I kept my eye on him.

Fast forward two years, an EP, and 16,000 MySpace fans, and Jesse Cale has teamed up with Jeff Anderson to form Anderson Cale, an ambient post-rock duo whose first album rose just over a week ago.  I apologize for my lack of focus on Jeff, who I imagine has just as much to do with this project as Jesse does, but we’ve never been in contact whereas Jesse and I have.

The latter was nice enough to send me a copy of the album shortly after its release, and I recall that my first opinion was, “Wow; I hadn’t expected that at all.”  The project is a shift from Jesse’s upbeat, energetic recordings of old.  It’s more melodic and thoughtful, more parts The Mercury Program than Hellogoodbye, where I might’ve associated his work before.

Music like this evokes serious introspection, at least for me.  Every time I put it on, from the opening strains of The Wait, I’m under the impression that it’s a moment made just for me, something very close.  I couldn’t see audibly sharing this disc with just anyone I knew – the songs come packaged with a kind of intimacy that requires commitment from both artist and listener.  I can’t believe that this is any sort of accident; the guiding question surrounding the release was, “Why can’t there be music written for the purpose of bringing peace to the anxious soul?”

And peaceful it is.

The adventure is beautifully composed, capturing both the highs and lows of its gentle instrumentation.  The album listens like the morning after the first snow in a small town, where you can wake up and have the serene all to yourself.  I can imagine setting myself up for a long walk outside the city and putting this album on for guidance.  The ambiance behind the main instrumentation suggests late-night drives, artistic endeavors, even listening for the sake of listening; as mellow as the album is, it’s far from background noise.

Anderson and Cale merge flawlessly as comrades; I can’t stop calling this release something beautiful, nor could I use any other word for how well they work together.  For having put the effort together within a year, the compositional chemistry is mindblowing.  It sounds the two of them were discussing things with instruments rather than setting out to record an album.  “The journey has been easy thus far, because we’re not trying,” the band writes on its MySpace. “We simply made what we feel to be a good piece of art without the visions of grandeur.”  This tenderness for the project is evident from start to finish, whether in the surprising guitars partway through Where the Saints Will Go, the choral joy of Move in Me, or the simple, circular plinkings of Breathe Out.

This is not a disc that will motivate you to run a marathon; if you’re looking for active, exciting music, this may not be the place.  But if you want to calm down, appreciate the work that goes into a release, and listen to something that makes you realize where you are, Anderson Cale is something to consider.

Cheers.

Links: MySpace • Facebook • Twitter • iTunes (opens the iTunes Player)