All right, Amazon reviewer Edward Parr described Israel Nash’s previously released Rain Plans as “a fusion of Neil Young, Pink Floyd, and Barclay James Harvest.” All right (again, because I’m a prog and folk guy!), I’m listening.
Someone else mentioned My Morning Jacket. Then, Brian Wilson was name-dropped. Somebody’s GPS gave directions to Laurel Canyon, circa 1971.
Bless me father, but I hear David Crosby, when in his song “Cowboy Movie,” he sings, “You know that Indian woman, she wasn’t an Indian – she was the law.”
My friend Kilda Defnut didn’t say a word about the music, but went out to buy vegetable seeds for her summer garden. Later in the day, she listened to Procol Harum’s Salty Dog on her stereo, nodded at the sympathetic grandiose sound, and then simply said: “Robin Trower never played a banjo.”
Quite frankly, Topaz spins in a cosmic folky and sometimes soulful space. “Dividing Line” begins with a David Gilmour guitar which echoes the dream sound of Floyd. Seriously, I half expected to hear “And when the band you’re in starts playing different tunes.” But Israel Nash’s vocals quickly swim in earthy waters that ooze with passion. Horns trumpet a fanfare and the whole thing mushrooms into an epic slow dance that does, indeed, validate my Kilda’s comment that connects this music to both the “grand hotel” beauty of Procol Harum and planting those new seeds in any hopeful garden.
Then, “Closer” hovers with acoustic guitar, steel pedal, banjo, and a vocal that gives more than a nod to Neil Young in his dreamy “Be on my side, I’ll be on your side, baby” mood. Speaking of Neil Young (during his Geffen Records shapeshifting Trans / Old Ways / Everybody’s Rockin’ period), well, “Down in the Country” could be an outtake from This Note’s for You – replete with soulful backing vocals, a wondrous guitar solo, and horns galore.
There’s a great and very American quote in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn where our Huckleberry complains about “the victuals” because “everything was cooked by itself.” Huck prefers his food cooked “in a barrel of odds and ends,” because “it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and things go better.” Israel Nash’s Topaz does just that — with a big mystical production that touches the sacred soulful root of Van Morrison as he sang about “a marvelous night for a moon dance.”
“Southern Coasts,” with its dense beauty, orbits a slow dance memory (that still twangs) and sings, “I want you,” under the always-present pedal-steeled “star-crossed lovers” distant stars. “Stay” slides with horns and prayerful vocals that recall early Boz Scaggs’ “We Were Always Sweethearts” (from the brilliant Moments album). Nash’s tunes evoke that very same soul-fired and incandescent planet that burns with the beauty of analog memories.
Just a comment: A lot of big names have been mentioned – especially Neil Young, and there’s no avoiding that reference – but Topaz goes way beyond acoustically strummed heavily (sort of) symbolic radio-friendly songs like America’s “Horse With No Name.” There are more soulful psych-drenched tunes.
“Canyon Heart” swirls with organ, harmonica, and gets country-rock specific with an urgent slide guitar to punctuate the tune. Then, “Indiana” doesn’t even try to bluff its way through a really great rock ’n’ roll poker game. Lots of aces, here. Ditto for “Howling Wind,” which huffs and puffs with a strong acoustic melody that, as David Crosby once sang, will always be “a long time gone” – yet remembered, for just that reason.
“Sutherland Springs” conjures the best of Neil Young again, and then dips into an inferno-fired guitar absolution. In a weird way, this is very righteous music that sheds the same “tears of rage” that the Band were able to soulfully conjure.
The final tune, “Pressure,” just pumps acoustic guitar and horn-pulsed urgency into a tough rock song that’s eerie, with a dense organ sunset sound that covers the same territory as (the great) John Fogerty’s line, “don’t let the man get you and do what he done to me.” Of course, there’s “a banker” and “a county deputy shouting they have papers to serve,” and “a shot rang out and the rain came rushing in.” It’s all in the tradition of sketchy blues stuff, replete with an extraordinary electric guitar solo.
And, there are the words that ooze with American pathos: “They made a game that can’t be won; they keep us down while they look from up above.” Yeah, just like David Crosby’s (before-mentioned) “Cowboy Movie,” this song tussles with the law. No one’s selling Hallmark greeting cards here. This tune, in yet another weird way, is also very righteous music.
In true Americana tradition, Topaz is (to quote once again Mark Twain) “a barrel of odds and ends.” It’s a place where “things get mixed up.” Its grooves “kind of swap around.” It gives a hard glance at America, and with the sound of smokey barbequed “victuals,” and a banjo here and then (not played by Robin Trower!), Israel Nash creates music that, somehow, just makes “things go better.”
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