Neil Halstead

Chasing a Myth

originally published November 19, 2008

Chances are, astute shoppers have seen them: music fans canvassing the dusty used vinyl bins, being blinded by the cellophane sheen of new CD racks and bleary-eyed from staring at online catalogues like a post-modern messenger-bag-equipped Indiana Jones, looking for that mythical album or artist.

The search for that undiscovered aural gem may never be realized, but these musical adventurers know what they are looking for: the long-lost sides of a forgotten singer. Whether they are the tremolo-ridden strums of a long forgotten Deep South dwelling blues singer from the 1930s or the hushed genteel strums of a British singer-songwriter may be a question of taste for the seeker of these forgotten sounds, but one thing is certain: Neil Halstead looks and sounds a lot like this urban myth.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I live in a small town and write songs. I get out to tour when I can, but I don’t think I’m the mythical guy,” laughs Halstead in a phone interview with Flagpole.

While Halstead’s music may feature the right combination of acoustic strums, soft melodies and mellow sounds that make the vinyl junkies and indie aficionados go ga-ga, he simply sees what he’s doing as a sonic experiment in being frugal.

“I’ve never done a record where we spent five hours on all of the songs and then that’s the record. That’s the approach I wanted to take, even though it took 10 days,” says Halstead.

Those 10 days spent recording Halstead’s latest offering, Oh! Mighty Engine (Brushfire Records), may pale in comparison to the marathon-like sessions of some artists (take Guns 'n' Roses’ 13-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy as an extreme example), but the homemade nature of the songs suggests that they had time to spare. Rather than coming off like epic productions, the album’s 12 songs seem more attuned to a friend showing off his latest songwriting efforts over a few drinks, and that’s just what Halstead was aiming for - something a bit more hand-crafted, refined and deliberate than any modern-day Phil Spector could hope to create with hi-fi, digital-influenced Wagner-like production.

“The thing I really wanted to do was to make the album as much voice and guitar as possible. I thought the album would just be almost a live record - one voice, one guitar; it ended up having a lot of overdubs on it, but it still has that feel,” says Halstead.

The feel of the album - Halstead’s second effort and first since 2002’s Sleeping on Roads, is that of songs taken to their most basic elements. Ethereal melodies hanging overhead and harmonies just out of reach of the listener. It’s a sound that Halstead first created amid washes of psychedelic guitar feedback in his '90s shoegazer band Slowdive and then perfected in the more stripped down Mojave 3.

“Mojave 3 is just about writing songs. It’s not about a particular style or anything. The first Mojave record is quite stripped down; it does have a bit of reverb on it, but not much else. I think Mojave 3 started out sort of stripped down, and we’ve built it back up over five albums,” says Halstead.

Even though Mojave 3’s sound may be built up, the simple elegance of Oh! Mighty Engine proves that while Halstead may not be the second coming of Nick Drake, he deserves a place among the upper echelon of the purveyors of pensive bedroom pop. While listeners often found themselves seasick with the swirling guitars of Slowdive, fans of Mojave 3’s kinder and gentler version of psychedelia, Halstead’s flirtations with the sound aren’t apparent on the new album. Instead, the songs are all about the melody. It’s the sing-song and simple arrangements that fuel the disc’s core.

But somewhere between the feedback-drenched electric guitar swells of his past and the simple chord progressions of his present lies Neil Halstead today, and while he may not be the songwriter of myth for a legion of record collectors, he just might be the songwriter for the moment for music fans. That’s not a bad thing either.

Tonight's performance will be recorded as part of the Athens 441 radio show series. Plan to arrive early as recording beings promptly at 7 p.m.

Jason Bugg

WHO: Modern Skirts, The Old Ceremony, Neil Halstead
WHERE: The Melting Point
WHEN: Sunday, Nov. 23
HOW MUCH: $12