Noon
Twain; "Noon"; from Amazon
Noon is a Twain album. This turn of phrase that sounds like something of another time, another era. Twain evokes being split, cleaved in two, but also a certainty of safety in the maritime world, where Samuel Clemens pulled his pen name from.
At the time of release in 2022, Mat Davidson, the auteur behind the project, had performed as a sideman in other bands and was building his career. He had worked in The Low Anthem, a group that we listened to as we drove out west on a big road trip (among other groups), and orbited in the same circles as Big Thief. He was on their big record we listened to on the boys’ trip, playing all kinds of countrified and twangy pieces that we would forget as we fell asleep in the afternoon sun. Given the circumstances, you could swap the words: Twain is a Noon album.
The “high lonesome sound” associated with Appalachian singing is a strained, elevated, plaintive quality, as if the voice is being pulled forth from the throat to move across the holler to someone else’s ear. The Tallest Man on Earth borrows some of these ideas, so it’s clear they can travel a world away, across an ocean, but the most important thing is that the idea shares the same emotional register as the sorrow inherent in the people of the hills. There’s a feeling of being completely alone, exposed, a kind of nakedness against the background accompaniment.
The thing that struck me the most at first listen is the rubato. It kicks off the first song on the record and carries throughout. Rubato, for the uninitiated, is the expressive “giving and taking of time,” rather than keeping things on a predictable beat cycle. You can think of it as letting the music breathe or pulse. On “Noon”, it has the feeling of a band director leading a children’s choir or high school musical, cueing the collective breathing of the group. You fall into it as you listen, the quiet ambitions of his craft unfurling in front of you, opening up.
Verdict: Keep
Who gives the time back?