Again within the late ’90s, Marc Ribot pitched an early model of Map Of A Blue Metropolis to a label recognized for “brutal dying metallic bands and puke-splattered poets.” It was rejected as “too darkish.” He tinkered with it for a few decade, recording new variations with the late Hal Willner producing.
“However by then, I’d grown hooked up to the sooner variations, and I informed Hal and my long-suffering supervisor that the studio variations have been too slick,” says Ribot, a genre-bending guitarist and composer recognized for his collaborations with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Neko Case and others. “Time handed, and someplace alongside the road, I misplaced the multi-tracks to the unique variations—and in 2020, we misplaced Hal. However I at all times knew I needed these songs out on the earth.”
Then Ribot met Bay Space alt-folk singer, songwriter and producer Ben Greenberg. “I knew he was the proper particular person to hatch these unusual birds,” Ribot says of his first-ever vocal album. “Due to mysterious applied sciences permitting Ben to de-mix/remix the sooner tracks, and because of his good mixes of fabric from the Willner classes, we now provide them to your listening pleasure.”
Ribot takes us by way of every monitor under.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Elizabeth”
“Solely those that have seen the ‘pure’ cycle of life from each ends perceive simply how flawed nature actually is.”
2) “For Celia”
“Primarily based on conversations with buddy and documentary filmmaker Celia Lowenstein, the tune paperwork the impossibility of becoming human disasters—from the intimate to the grand historic—into our redemptive narratives.”
3) “Say My Identify”
“A falsetto R&B Psyche and Eros—electrified by Greg Lewis’ Hammond.”
4) “Daddy’s Journey To Brazil”
“A hungover post-punk echo of Jobim’s well-known ‘Wave,’ importing the ennui of a late-capitalist touring musician into that tropicalismo paradise.”
5) “Map Of A Blue Metropolis”
“The tune describes waking up on an elevated prepare platform someplace in New York Metropolis—perhaps Coney Island—and never figuring out the place you might be. The title got here from my daughter, who, when she was seven, cherished drawing sophisticated maps. At some point, she labored solely in blue magic marker. I requested why, and this was her response: “It’s not a blue map. It’s a map of a blue metropolis.”
6) “Dying Of A Narcissist”
“‘I at all times believed that, within the love of my life, I’d discover my reflection.’ Some folks get it flawed proper from the beginning.”
7) When The World’s On Hearth
“The Carter Household recorded this tune in 1930. It’s important to admit they have been means forward of the curve. I added a couple of lyrics to make it secure for agnostics.”
8) “Someday Jailhouse Blues”
“‘Typically I lay down my wrath, like I lay my physique down.’ A kind of Buddhist blues from somebody who noticed America extra clearly than it noticed itself—and tried to reply with gentleness.”
9) “Optimism Of The Spirit”
“It is a piece we cooked up within the studio in 2008—an ambient improv of mine sliced, diced, spiced and scrambled into François Lardeau’s good remix and percussion omelet. The astute listener could discover that it has nothing to do stylistically with the remainder of the album. However generally that’s an excellent factor.”
See Marc Ribot reside.
