A couple of weeks ago, I received the following email: “hello I would like to send you some music. -bill.” No questions, no personal pleasantries, no links or information, almost no punctuation, just a perfunctory greeting, a statement of intent, and a name. He didn’t bother with a subject heading.

A week later I found a cd in my mail by a band called The Red River. The cover was a poorly drawn (sorry Bill) picture of a boat with a tree growing out of it, sailing on blue waves that looked more like eagle talons. The drawing was in the medium of magic marker on lined loose leaf paper. The liner notes contained one credit and one email address and nothing else. The credit was “by Bill Roberts”, and the email address was the one Bill had written me from.

Needless to say, I was terribly excited to hear Bill’s songs. I felt as if I were about to hear the music Marcus Aurelius would have made had he had access to Pro Tools.

The record, Some Songs About A Flood, is, somehow unsurprisingly, great. The Red River plays simple songs with simple melodies, and plays them mostly on the acoustic guitar, shaker, voice, and backing voices. These songs are so carefully sung, so delicately arranged, that listening to them can be as tense as watching a game of Jenga, the outcome of which determines who will live and who will die, generally.

I still know nothing about Bill Roberts. But I have my suspicions:

1. He likes the Microphones a lot.
2. Based on the sophistication of his music and lyrics, I would be very surprised if he were any less than 14 years old, and based on his energy and aesthetic, I would be utterly shocked if he were a day older than 79.
3. Besides his obvious adherence to the Stoic philosophy of life, I think it’s safe to assume that Bill Roberts has a soft, muddy spot for the Romantic Naturalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his follower, Phil Elvrum.

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The Red River - "The Mighty Tide"

A composition about and of waves, “The Mighty Tide” is a gospel song whose vocal solo near its end is both hilarious and sublime. Listen to him breathlessly sneak hoots into his vocal line as if his awe of and deference to the power of nature would not be apparent if he did not include all the hallmarks of a good gospel solo.

***

The Red River - "Real Danger"

The song builds, becomes denser, richer, yet always remains perfectly clear, never muddy. Each instrument is a pane of glass: as they are piled on top of each other, the quality of what they transmit changes, but the centre of the song (its long-unfolding vocal melody) is never obscured, just differently lit. [Info]

[Update: You can buy or trade for Some Songs About A Flood by emailing Bill. He is very nice, and confirmed that my three suspicions were indeed correct.]