"Many present events ,” says Arbouretum founder and leader Dave Heumann, “seem to indicate that this process is in fact happening.”
Heumann is referring to the collapse of society as we know it.
“This idea,” he continues, “is tremendously fascinating to me as a continually unfolding narrative. It’s also a really great subject to drone on about at an otherwise lighthearted family dinner or company Christmas party, just to balance the vibe in the room. And if one writes what are essentially folk songs that have to do with this kind of impending catastrophe, others can rightfully call the music ‘Doom Folk.’”
As enticing as any excuse to couple the words “doom” and “folk” may be, the truth is there’s much, much more to Arbouretum’s sound. Classifying the band as a heavy electric folk band with doomy overtones is both accurate and a gross disservice.The fact is that Heumann and the band—which finally settled into a stable lineup before recording its new album, Song of the Pearl—have forged a new alloy of psychedelic heavy rock that captures the narrative power and sonic fury of electric Neil Young, the floral qualities of 1960s British psychedelia and the textural use of distortion at the foundation of drone and stoner rock. More importantly, though, Arbouretum manages to avoid the parochial trappings of any of those camps. In other words, Arbouretum sounds like all of those things without the clichés.Throw in Heumann’s flair for putting a fresh twist on tried-and-true (read: tired) traditions, and Arbouretum arises out of the psychedelic swamp blazing with an almost shamanic power.
Take “Another Hiding Place,” a downtempo number on Pearl that sees Heumann wailing softly about “cities gliding by” as the narrator is “trying to watch the road” on his way “from here to nowhere.” Immediately, it’s clear that this ain’t your average road song. Heumann charges his voice with a subtle yet thoroughly palpable suggestion of melancholy and heavy-heartedness. In his hands, the familiar road-song template becomes something almost entirely unrecognizable, is given a new lease on life and becomes elevated to the level of true art.
“It’s written from the point of view of a traveler,” Heumann explains, “perhaps a musician, who has just cheated on his significant other and is struggling to come to terms with the ramifications of his actions. I wanted to do something in direct contrast to those kinds of feel-good highway songs you’ll hear on classic rock radio, like ‘Ramblin’ Man’ and ‘Take it Easy’ that romanticize the life of the roving, here-for-a-night rocker on the road. And the song is morally ambiguous in that the narrator isn’t so much saying ‘Wow, I feel really bad about that,’ as he is ‘Wow, I am so totally fucked now.’There’s a disconnect of conscience implied.”
Indeed, Heumann gives the traveling-musician archetype a decidedly literary treatment. In the process, he casts the rocker in the same mythical, morally complex mold that many modern authors have ascribed to colonial explorers of old. If that sounds like a stretch, the song “Mohammed’s Hex and Bounty” off of 2006’s Rites of Uncovering was directly inspired by “Love with a Few Hairs” by Mohammed Mrabet, as told to Paul Bowles, and the album as a whole bears a heavy influence from Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky.
“I was impressed by this book that was so epic and huge,” Heumann recalls, “but yet was written in a way that pointed to the complete dismantling of cozy belief systems—in essence saying ‘The universe doesn’t really care about you.’ Bowles was able to do this in a very different way than what we think of as classical existentialists like Camus or Sartre because of his powerful storytelling style. He wasn’t so much trying to prove a point as much as he was just trying to write a good story.”
Listeners fearing that Heumann’s literary interests might weigh the music down can rest assured, as Heumann actually tucks them into the music.
“I’m not trying to bowl people over with my vocabulary,” he says. Much like Bowles, he’s “just trying to write a compelling song” that you can follow.
> Arbouretum
Mar. 6, Union Pool, 484 Union Ave. (at Meeker Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-609-0484; 8,
