Joe O’Connell would probably hate to be called anything that reeks of teleology — say, “groundbreaking” or “forward-thinking” — so I’ll have to settle for “revelatory.” Revelation hopefully hints at something that’s already there, has already been there, refracted anew: a snug fit for O’Connell’s particular traditionalism. Having released a steady stream of scarcely-promoted material for the better part of 10 years as Elephant Micah, the southern Indianan is responsible for some of the past decade’s most bread-breakingly stirring music. And with over a dozen full-length releases in various formats, O’Connell sits exactly on the cusp of being too prolific for his own good. (His current label, Time-Lag, has released albums by Charalambides and MV & EE, but, you know, who hasn’t?) But his pair of new releases, Echoer’s Intent and Elephant Micah Plays the Songs of Bible Birds, still provide excellent entry points. Part of the reason for this is the artistic development the two demonstrate: Bible Birds was recorded and vaulted several years ago, soon after O’Connell’s incredibly fertile “And The” sessions, and it is communal and life-affirming; Echoer’s Intent is the secluded, ambivalent work of one man and his guitar. He’s always run the gamut from lo-fi and noise pop to bluegrass and folk, but the juxtaposition through time here is particularly riveting.
Why Plays the Songs of Bible Birds hasn’t seen the light of day until now is anyone’s guess, but it’s a gorgeous and cohesive work of lo-fi. “Cardinals” opens with a drone to split your heart, replete with minute guitarwork and nearly imperceptible vocal loops piling up behind the lead. The potential energy is staggering: the chord doesn’t change until a minute and a half into the song, and it comes off as gravity-defying. It’s the first of many chill-inducers, and how O’Connell keeps them coming — why, for example, the simple bid, “Is this your way to tell me that I’ve gone astray?” in “To Exit This Circular Highway” is one of 2010’s greatest musical moments — is a mystery locked inside the album itself.
One can’t overstate the importance of Beth Remis’ harmonies and the violin that tethers several of the songs, simple touches that stick with you longer than you’d expect. Relying so heavily on folk instrumentation and structure seems like a recipe for music that falls flat on its public-domain face, but you can tell O’Connell’s channeling something much bigger than himself in these songs. He’s not performing what he knows, he’s looking for answers to what he doesn’t. Lyrically, both albums are loaded with bird imagery, and O’Connell’s fascination on Bible Birds with where their songs came from, why they sing, etc., is an unveiled metaphor for where humans find their habits and meaning. So yeah, it’s about faith, but it’s never “God music.”
Four years later, the question has become much knottier. It’s “Too hard to tune to the loon’s call,” O’Connell admits at the beginning of the interrogative Echoer’s Intent, the words of someone no longer so earnest about music’s singular role in life. A kind of feathery, winding melody reflects this uncertainty, more Drake than Young, and introduces an album full of psychological contours as perfectly as any song could. His more labyrinthine lyrics and masterful guitar both suit the much higher fidelity of the album. If it really was recorded live, I can’t imagine how O’Connell stopped the audience from clapping during the empty spaces in the seven-minute prowl of “Untrained Architecture,” a stunning asymptote in which O’Connell lets abstract equivalences (“Like an archivist in the marketplace, I am true to you”; “Like a stargazer in stormy weather, I make room for you”) accumulate between buzzes and muted stabs. Although O’Connell sounds unsettlingly alone in these songs, most of the album seems intent on peeling the onion of this unnamed “you.” Maybe this explains why he picked as enigmatic a bird as the loon for his focus; despite himself, he just doesn’t observe birds and humans the same way. The lyrics have an elusive, furrowed draw, enough that when he plops the clunky “Robot barking dog in the dark” on you at the end, you actually kind of want to see where he’s going with this.
O’Connell’s a liberal proponent of the free-digital-music era (and Time-Lag doesn’t appear to mind), but he rewards old-fashioned purchases with beautifully silkscreened gatefold packaging. If I had to recommend one album over the other, it would have to be Bible Birds, if only because the album knows pleasure centers so well. Echoer’s Intent, rather, seems designed for listeners who know O’Connell; I can imagine that a surgical unraveling of his old, gorgeous chords and awed aphorisms wouldn’t hit as hard for a first-timer. But I don’t want to oversell their differences; neither release could be mistaken for the work of anyone else. Ultimately, the draw of Elephant Micah, I think, is paradoxical: the music always seems to emanate from and speak to a very young and very contemporary generation — O’Connell’s not pretending to be wizened, playing for dads — yet it’s miraculously unburdened by self-consciousness, cultural glut, knee-jerk cynicism, or anything else typical of a competitive ‘market.’ As a twenty-something, I’m inspired by a fellow twenty-something who’s so earnest and articulate about having figured nothing out. If Elephant Micah’s music is any indication, there’s a strange peace in asking the right questions.
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