Mark Lager’s Summer Vinyl: Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter – Marble Son (10th Anniversary)

The atmosphere circulates moisture from the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) and the winds carry these clouds from the west over Mexico during May. The North American monsoon season develops during June as the rains move northward into New Mexico. The North American monsoon season peaks in July and August in New Mexico with sometimes spectacular storms.

The fourth album from Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, released 10 years ago on August 2, 2011, is perhaps the most powerful record released that year. The experience of listening to these songs is somewhat similar to an afternoon in New Mexico during the monsoon summer. The album opens with an eight-minute epic, its longest track “Hushed by Devotion“, where the fiery guitar of Phil Wandscher conjures images of heat haze mirages over the asphalt of cracked desert roads. Bill Herzog’s bass and Eric Eagle’s percussion are the cylinders and engine of a black car hurtling down the highways. Every time Jesse Sykes’ voice enters, it sounds like the rambler stopping the vehicle to trudge through a grove, solace from the scorching sun. Phil Wandscher, Bill Herzog, and Eric Eagle then commence into a jam that smells like cannabis smoke and patchouli incense wafting up from the dashboard, redolent of the late 60s /early 70s.

“Marble Son“, the title track, is a complete contrast. Contemplative choral voices and delicate fingerpicking are a tiny stream trickling over stones in a dry creek bed outside a forgotten desert cemetery. There is a moment of reflection gazing upon the graves as the trees rustle in the breeze. “They say we are the trees / we are in the air / we are the land / the ocean and the moon / we are despair.” Anne Marie Ruljancich’s viola and the pedal steel of Bill Patton and Chris Zasche set this spiritual scene. Beside the cemetery, there is a small shrine with the Virgin of Guadalupe surrounded by burnt candles, blackened wicks that have not been lit in a long time, the fossilized wax that melted many years back, the statue’s eyes closed in sorrow. Chris Zasche’s pedal steel and Phil Wandscher’s guitar are the sigh in Jesse Sykes’ lyrics “Come to Mary / she don’t mind / to everybody left behind / the world feels wicked / but I’m feeling fine / I’m the one who cannot let go / how I long to stand beside her golden glow.“

“Servant of Your Vision” contains depression in Jesse Sykes’ lyrics (“Summer hearts are just longing for the cold / soul whose grown tired of his skin / will the servant of your vision kick down the door and bring shadows for your flowers?”), as well as a feeling of fighting against this depression in Eyvand Kang’s viola, Jeremy Manley’s piano, and Phil Wandscher’s guitar and pedal steel that are almost triumphant.

The driver sees a saloon and pulls over for a beer. A droning organ opens the track “Ceiling’s High” as the driver sits at the bar and gets an afternoon buzz. Jason Staczek’s piano and Phil Wandscher’s fuzzy guitar are a break from the heaviness, even as Jesse Sykes’ lyrics continue to speak for the outcasts: “The ghost still needs to breathe / the devil he never came / but he still shouts out your name / among the missing, the estranged / he knows he can’t keep you satisfied / offering delight to ease the longing.“

The drink does not satisfy, though, it only increases the isolation. The loner has left the bar and “Be It Me, or Be It None” is facing the emptiness of the long drive still ahead. “There’s nothing left back here / for the silent one who stands, I will disappear.“

All alone back in the desert, the wanderer takes out the peyote that has been waiting for this hour, this moment, this place. The wanderer ingests the peyote and becomes lost in ancient Native American ruins. “Pleasuring the Divine” and the instrumental “Weight of Cancer” are psychedelic sequences. Jesse Sykes sings of “symphonic reverie / eternal and reserved / where I could meld into your side, until the mystery’s satisfied.” “Weight of Cancer” explores this troubled terrain, Phil Wandscher’s guitar is hallucinatory and intense.

Anne Marie Ruljancich’s viola and Bill Patton’s pedal steel surround Jesse Sykes’ sad vocals. The wanderer looks up at the “Birds of Passerine” and wonders whether escape from fear of mortality is possible. “You’re free from the muck / caught in the mire / born of light / stillborn of desire / some they get away / while others find the will to stay / some thrive but are left unsatisfied / the world won’t let you go / still we had to cry / for the space you occupied.“

“Your Own Kind” is the climax of the record. Throughout the long summer day, the blue skies and sunshine slowly vanished beneath billowing cumulonimbus clouds ominous in the evening. Uncut described this record as a “roaring tempest.” This track is the definition and essence of that turbulence in Phil Wandscher’s raging and wild guitar as Jesse Sykes sings “to live a life completely / you must first let go of everything you know.“

Closer is dusk fading into a lullaby, a melancholy mood, nightfall, a summer twilight. Eyvand Kang’s viola is elegiac and funereal, Phil Wandscher’s guitar is plangent, and Jesse Sykes’ lyrics and vocals are deeply poignant. She stands “behind a doorway of wooden roses, where nobody goes, broken-hearted.” The darkness descends, the rain softly washes away the pain and tears.

by Mark Lager