from the Critical List,
July 10, 1987
Silos: Cuba
(Record Collect). There's a theory, or a tenet, or whatever it is, that holds
that Real Art's a function of Pain and Neuroses and Psychic Derangement, and
that all Real Artists are Miserable -- 50,000 famous examples are at this point
in the argument paraded by in support -- and that the Truths they express are
(at best, at worst, it's all the same) a sort of Wallowing in Shit. Because, of
course, the World Is Shit, and not to admit it -- nay, to embrace it! -- is
either cowardly or naive, or both. Many of the record albums I receive in the
mail, especially those of the more alternative variety (the mainstream
being mostly and truly content to just have a good time and make a lot of
money), sound to be founded upon just such a principle. I have, from time to
time (especially when attempting something "artistic" myself), wondered if there
might not be something to this view, wondered whether my basic
contentedness might not be what stands between me and all my Great Works
Unrealized. Must one abandon oneself to the demimonde in order to penetrate the
eternal verities? Well, I'm skeptical. I mean, what's wrong with domestic bliss?
Why is that any more boring than, say, drug addiction? Why do some people
who love to hear Lou Reed sing about heroin leave the room when he pays tribute
to his wife and home? What's so great (or revolutionary, or brave) about being
fucked up? Can't one be in the vanguard without having a lot of stuff to work
through? Can't happiness be interesting?
Questions, questions, questions! All of them
occasioned by Cuba, the second excellent LP by New York's Silos, wherein
are offered (as effective if not necessarily intentional refutation of the
gloomy postulates recounted above) several songs that, in a manner as
straightforward, physically affecting and musically uncompromising as can be
found anywhere else in the American pop underground, unsanctimoniously celebrate
not the Darkness but the acts and conditions that stave it off -- family,
fellowship, commitment, love. That, for example, "Mary's Getting Married" ("On
March 15th/Up in Vermont/At her family's house"), and not even to the singer, is
made to sound terribly adventurous and profound -- which, of course, it is.
There's nothing so difficult, after all, about letting one's life go to hell. I
see it everywhere I go, and, frankly, I'm not impressed. It's the nature
of the physical universe and the business world, as well as of the human heart,
that it's easier to shut down than it is to stay open. To live, to love, to
work, is to spit in the face of entropy. I go for that, and the Silos
seem to, too. That's one (of more than one) reason(s) I dig this record to the
max, baby. There's a current of tenderness running the course of the LP, through
ballad and rave-up alike, the expression of which (both in words and music) is
so clear and direct and matter-of-fact that the most potentially mawkish
sentiments ring only true. "Every day I see my wife/Her words cut through every
defense/I ask for advice/When she speaks it's from the heart/And she knows I'm
hers for always," states most-of-the-time leader Walter Salas-Humara, and you
simply cannot not believe him; you hear it as an accurate report. Such
deadpan details as "Margaret goes to bed around eight/I go to bed around
1/Margaret gets up at six/I get up at six" speak volumes about the workings of
real-world affection and sacrifice; it's through these little things that we may
approach the Big....
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Copyright Robert Lloyd © 1987 and
2006