Forgive us: we’re trying to hold this together. When we were given ‘Forever Dolphin Love’, the third collection (or re-titled debut?) of songs from New Zealand’s Connan Mockasin, we we’re expecting something a little more conventional. But as we played through, quite simply Bowlegs’ brain went on the blink. And as we listened, the further out to sea we found ourselves. This is outsider songwriting. Songs drift, start, stop, flex, reshape in transit: the effect is mesmeric. We quickly accept that this is a highlight of the year. We fall into Connan’s orbit, time runs into a gravel pit, light refracts, and tastes taste stronger.
His oddball floaty sound is now in full bloom, the atmosphere softly treads along the edge of psyche pastoral, thumbs strum guitars, words barely escape the black hole of Connan’s mind. And then there’s that voice. It is distinctive to say the least. A helium-inflated folly beyond compare, but utterly bewitching. In Spielberg’s ‘Poltergeist’ when the little girl is crying for her mommy from the other side of the TV, who could have suspected that this would one day manifest itself as a template for crooning?
It incorporates the atonal, the toy-town, and the minimal, yet it doesn’t seem weighed down with baggage: it feels just right. Isn’t this the goal of all decent artists, to stylize, yet punch home with a direct emotional resonance? So often the style outweighs the resonance you find in an artist’s work. Here it’s deftly negotiated.
We can but gather and genuflect at his power. Soon this frozen state of bliss infects us, and all the songs on the album. Tempos stick at 90bpm or less. Few other musical cats show, no-one interferes in the strange David Lynch-esque floor-show. Memories unravel. Connan is messing with the DNA of Can’s ‘Ege Bamyasi’, Butthole Surfers, Arthur Russell and Os Mutantes. He is brewing stranger musical algebra than Euclid could fathom. Fans of Shimmy Disc will swoon.
Dear Connan,
- What is the mysterious Snat you sing of?
- What are the co-ordinates of Quadropus Island?
- Is Egon Hosford ‘chunky’ or ‘chummy’?
Best
Bowlegs
JT
