silence kit #2

Joan of Arc
So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness [Jade Tree, 2003]

Matthew Perpetua posted a few really cool Joan of Arc mp3s a few weeks ago, which sort of reminded me that this Chicago-based experimental music outfit was one of my favorite bands for a short period of time, a band that my younger self would champion for being 'difficult'. That period of time was roughly in between the release of their 1999 album Live In Chicago (not a live album by the way, while the cover art was like a wicked sendup of a seminal Jean-Luc Godard movie) and So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness. On the records, Tim Kinsella and his band of revolving members always come across as being more than a bit inscrutable: weird lyrics definitely, the art-school influences that was always going on in the background, the band's dalliances with a kind of post-rock guitar soundchecking that comes at the listener at all angles, the combined effect sometimes sounding not unlike some fucked-up jazz troupe trapped in a time warp. Challenging, indeed, but very rewarding if you enjoy music that don't quite bother to start making sense.