tag:bomethius.com,2005:/blogs/reviews-and-experiences?p=2Reviews and Experiences2020-03-19T13:56:56-05:00Bomethiusfalsetag:bomethius.com,2005:Post/62550762020-03-19T13:56:56-05:002023-12-10T12:44:36-06:00Review: Sweet Nothings (By David Mead)<p><em>Sweet Nothings</em> is the third official album from Bomethius—alias Jonathan Hodges, presently from Dallas. A multi-instrumentalist who completed a degree in violin performance last year at Southern Methodist University, he produced nearly every sound you’ll hear in these recordings himself: the singing, playing the keyboards, the guitar, the violin, plus much of the engineering. The author-composer-performer’s personal investment in this project is difficult to miss. </p>
<p>The collection, available on all major streaming platforms, is book-ended by two songs that technically aren’t songs. First is the title track, something you’ll never hear Bomethius perform live because it consists of his voice overdubbed on itself a dozen or more times. And there are no words. But this voice, working over some two-and-a-half octaves with rich colors of tone and harmony, lures us out of mere daily life to explore with him for a while. </p>
<p>The ending piece isn’t a song because it isn’t vocal, rather for unaccompanied violin. Typically for Bomethius, the titles of these book-ending pieces play on each other: “Sweet Nothings” versus “Nothing’s Sweet.” And where the opening made full use of modern recording and editing techniques, the finale is simply one violin played in front of a mic, the persona joyful and striving. </p>
<p>It becomes quickly clear, as we step from the ethereal “Sweet Nothings” into the first of these explorations with sung words, that this fellow is not in a good mood. “Petrified Putrefaction” grabs our attention with slapped guitar strings and murky chords. The harsh third stanza overrides the philosophical musing at the start: “She can’t belong to you / Your misery is giving free tours.” The closing hammers, “Now we’re looking at / Petrified putrefaction.” </p>
<p>“Our Visit” is another sharp dialog, addressed more face-to-face than “Petrified Putrefaction,” with anger and regret bubbling up and spilling out. The text tells of a scene that begins with presumably real events but ends up churning in the persona’s mind as the intensity builds. </p>
<p>“Coming of Age” has the richest and most complex instrumental combinations. Besides Bomethius singing and playing keyboard and electric guitar, drums and bass are featured. The mood here is not precise as in the preceding tracks, though the distorted guitar at the end suggests mounting frustration. </p>
<p>The terse, moonless midnight of “The Lumin, a Kempton Hotel” disturbs with an odd piano, and wisps of sounds in the distance. Homesickness, however defined, is not new, but each creative artist experiences it in a new way. As simple as the song’s building blocks are, the emotional pain is profound: “Just take me home” — and we’re not sure what home is. </p>
<p>The latter portion of the album brings in a romantic thread. “My Clementine” is sweeter, though still painful for mourning personal loss. In “Drown Me” that Other—a different Other than in “Clementine” — is present, though the relationship seems longed for, not quite fulfilled. “Home,” a subdued piano solo, is overtly sweet, possibly portraying the home longed for in “The Lumin.” </p>
<p>“Peace of Mind” begins to disperse the darkness that has covered the album up to this point. Even then, “True Love Weights (Boofuw Buwfwy)” is a surprise for this artist: a happy love song. The listener can hear arrival, resolution, completion. </p>
<p>All of Bomethius’ compositions challenge the listener to extract sense and significance from text, music, orchestration, even the recorded production. More so than in previous albums, this one unfolds an artist’s journey from darkness to light. Hodges requires you to read his texts and listen to his pieces numerous times if you wish to join him on his journey. The journey is rich and rewarding.</p>Bomethiustag:bomethius.com,2005:Post/49210582017-11-06T13:19:23-06:002022-06-01T20:38:09-05:00Commentary: Intimatitudes (By Zachary Wallmark)<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="font_large">Bomethius’s <em>Intimatitudes</em> offers a complex, compelling, and sometimes jarringly contradictory take on themes long sustained by the singer-songwriter tradition, especially the (im)possibility and value of romantic and familial love. “Empty Promises,” the opening track, aptly sets the tone for this richly jaundiced musical diary. In a swirling over-dubbed vocal gesture reminiscent of Brian Wilson remixing Palestrina, the listener is invited into a generous, echoing landscape that manages to feel both churchy and playfully irreverent. (This song also invokes the liminal, ghostly work of artists like Bon Iver.) Without words, we are confronted with a sonic tension that is explored lyrically through the rest of the album. Structured as a series of brief, burning epiphanies on the frustrations and fleeting delights of human social life, <em>Intimatitudes</em> is a sweeping, raging, mischievous, and frolicsome journey. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="font_large">Bomethius is at his best as a songwriter in moments of high dramatic irony—or is that sarcastic sincerity?—when the stakes of the music and the words seem grossly out of sync. This vexed approach to the text-music problem is exemplified in songs like “HURTis,” which weds piano balladry and Beatles-esque lyricism with a patina of experimentalism, balancing intimacy with a heady swirl of sonic phantasmagoria. All of this musical romanticism provides support to a stark and unflinching psychoanalytic reading of a cast-off lover: “Does anyone really love you?” he goads, “Do you even love yourself?” (The shadow of this unhappy lover—or others, real or imaginary—stalks many of the tracks on this album.) Another illustration of this polarity can be found in “Merried,” the penultimate track, a twinkling, crystalline offering that belies its sardonic lyrics warning of the futility of sustained love: “No matter whom you love / and how much they hate you / each of us must die alone. Pretty clothes and ashes / Gardens of bones.” This may seem lachrymose were it not accompanied by a wash of romantic piano chords and shimmering electric piano textures, forcing the listener to believe the dulcet vocal tones over the flinty and unyielding words. Never has solitude and decay been so charmingly rendered. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="font_large">In addition to his perspectives on romantic relationships, Bomethius also daringly and playfully tackles less common lyrical terrain, including a number of tracks on the pleasures, banalities, and annoyances of family life (“HURTis,” “In-laws”), replete with a generous helping of keen observations from the piquant (“If it weren’t for secretaries,” he sings in “The Kiwi Tree,” “where would our step mothers be?”) to the wry (“I’ll hate your in-laws, if you’ll hate mine”). It is clear from songs like these—and the cute “Siblings”—that hell for Bomethius is not, as might be inferred from some of the darker lyrical fare on the album, <em>other people</em>. Though he may disagree with Sartre on this point, at the very least he shows that other people offer up good material, even if our moments with them are sometimes too painful to be approached in any other way but through the opiating prism of song. As if finally coming to terms with the Janus-faced nature of interpersonal closeness, the album closes with a return to sibling solidarity (“Hope Springs Internal”), and fades out on a resolute note of faith, acceptance, and grace. This ending doesn’t make you forget the bile on Bomethius’s tongue through most of the album, but it’s an effective palette-cleanser nonetheless. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="font_large">This grim yet joyous ambivalence is at the core of Bomethius’s achievement. <em>Intimatitudes</em> is a swirling Dichterliebe of regrets, heartache, and other species of despair, at once shot through with a sly, sideward wink: the Poet is performing his role, and reveling in the portrayal. Whether this is “sincere” or not is beside the point—its greatest strength lies in its gracious, full-throated claim to the space between art and artifice. Wise and world-weary beyond his years, Bomethius offers a debut album worthy of serious attention.<br><br>~Zachary Wallmark</span></p>Bomethius