You, Me, Everybody have released a new album, Midnight, (it’s also a song), and purports to define and explore the space between endings and beginnings. It’s also both a revelation and a progression.Good noon is that one time every day which is neither morning nor afternoon. You have to be right on the spot to wish someone Good Noon. Right on the dot. It’s not an end or a beginning, the middle-est time of day, more a transition.
Midnight, however, is more mysterious. It mostly happens when we’re sleeping. And while it technically marks the end of today and the beginning of tomorrow, there is no tomorrow. Midnight has an aura of lonesomeness and timelessness. A sense of duration, more of a concept than a moment, a mystery of time and space. No wonder we’re asleep! Leave midnight to the insomniacs!
It’s most definitely not a Misdirection, the opening track bursts forth in a flurry of banjo and then mandolin and a seemingly worried Laurence Frangos-Rhodes (hereafter to be named Laurence the Luthier) despairs about procrastination, the weight of my heart is tearing me apart.
Nonsense, young Laurence, you’re all grown up, that’s what the problem is. Welcome to the world of experience, with all its joy and cost. The Frangos-Rhodes brothers are matured, and so is the music on this, their sophomore long-player. Both a revelation and a progression. Everything is better!
And a touch more of Kim Bonnington, with the brothers (can’t call them the boys anymore, can I) offering harmonies which enhance the magic.
Kim soars on the title track, Midnight, which is a group composition, born on the road, home before midnight, but mystically aware of things past and present, all the instruments play a part in this rollicking song.
Laurence the Luthier on Heart of Stone, a standout melody sung beautifully with brotherly harmonies and guitar/banjo blend.
Everybody writes, Kim does the next one, Silver Spoon, a folky story from New Zealand’s past, a tragedy involving an ancestor accused of infanticide, but this time the plea of innocence is met with empathy as well as sympathy from the liberal judge, and the story is one of redemption, although you have to do the research.
A big contribution to our nation’s reputation for tolerance, but with sad undertones of how fragile that tolerance can be in a world that always forgets.
And the next one, Busy Without Me about taking the time to do nothing on a day off during a busy tour. And the one after the next, The Rest of Us, a song about leadership and the challenge of always being up to it.
Share the load, share the lead with Sam, and take the pressure off. Leadership is all about the rest of us being leaders too, leading from behind (I said that).
Sam Frangos-Rhodes on mandolin and Nat Torkington on banjo are the predominant instrumentalists who provide the colour, the flair and the frantic on almost all songs, but let’s not forget Laurence the Luthier whose picking on acoustic is way more than just rhythm.
But Sam and Nat both contribute tunes which dance with dash and dexterity. Virtuosic and fast. Sam’s Tune and Raurimu Spiral, both a place and a time, intertwined and blue as the grass.
Maturity and growth are the psychological explanations for this progression in time space and quality, but there is another reason from a technical and professional perspective. And that reason is Rachel Baiman.
Rachel is very well known as a Bluegrass artist in her own right, lesser as a producer. But here she is, down in Wellington a year ago now to work her magic on these songs. And with her come the keys to the Nashville Bluegrass cognoscenti, and hence the overall enrichment of the You, Me, Everybody sound and it hits you like a pitchfork of Appalachian dirt.
Engineer Troy Kelly is Kiwi, but the mixing is by Sean Sullivan, who features on many an album in my collection. Magic is made.
One song, Winds of Change, has Laurence the Luthier explaining that the experiment in structure is the real message in the song. Never mind the enchanting lyric, the melancholia of life passing us by twisted and absurd.
And let’s not forget Rob Henderson, who thumps the rhythm behind the psychotics of string. There are no drums, bless their absence, which allows the bass to drive.
Rob also expresses himself in song, in the writing of She’s Alright With Me, a touching little ballad about friendship versus love, and there’s whiskey and midnight involved, a dangerous combination. A classic bass riff is embellished by the pickers, and Sam takes the lead on vocals.
There’s Power In our Voices, never a truer word sung on this record, a classic little Bluegrass, written by Laurence the Luthier, ostensibly a protest song, but to my mind a selfless nod to his own growth as a vocalist. He’s on his journey, and sure has things to say.
Kim writes and sings so sweetly on the penultimate song, a sharing song about a shearing couple who are possibly mother and daughter finding respite in femininity and intimacy at the end of a long hot day. The Ballad of Bubs and Beautiful.
Bluegrass is not Gospel (it’s you, me and everybody), and Gospel is the antidote to Blues, but spiritual health is not necessarily religion, and Laurence the Luthier closes us out with a gentle Lazy Gospel, which he tells us erupts into a jam session at the Folk festival.
Oh, You, Me, Everybody, you’ve done something very special here, boisterous and playful, celestial and sombre, high and lonesome and midnightly, and (thank goodness), still drumless.
Midnight is out tomorrow on all the usual sources. Go find it. Play on repeat. Every day until 12pm.
Roger Bowie
