The Vernon Spring : Under a Familiar Sun
There is a lesson about expectation versus reality. A general sin as a critic which generalizes well to the real world is that we shouldn’t presume something’s identity first and judge it against that presumption. We are prone in general to creating an image of something in our heads, be that positive or negative or neutral, and basing all future experiences with that thing against this image that was based on little more than hearsay or supposition or a vague and careless kind of intuition. This is how we get everything from people prejudging art and its works based on who enjoys it and how those people behave to the more rigorous and complex issues of bigotry and judgment in the material of the world and its politics. Here? I was promised an avant-garde record and, for the first few listens, my ardent desire for more shocking and bold choices in that vein led me to have a difficulty connecting in a meaningful way with this material, a self-made barrier in the end proved fruitless.
A better touchpoint would have been Sam Beste’s history as Amy Winehouse’s pianist. Her combination of soul, jazz, blues and R&B feels abundant here, albeit displaced by about two decades of development on the electronic end of those genres. Similar to Winehouse’s material, do not come here expecting the wheel to be reinvented into shocking new forms; the bones of this material is soul and jazz, well-played and well-arranged, with just the right amount of pads, effects, and sonic accoutrements to provide interest against those lyrical piano lines that resonate like hymnals strung in spare air. There is something mint green about this record, something not quite the seafoam of rushing waves or the shifting grass of sunlit days but that ephemeral place in between. You can practically see the blur of light in your eyes obscuring arms, hair, faces into hazy outlines. There is a romanticism here that is built from restraint even when a few piano licks show that Beste has the technical capacity to overplay if he so chose. That understatement doesn’t come across as boring or lacking, however; there is a rich sense of ambiance, leaving each note and line humming and buzzing like insects in summer.
The most interesting thing to me about this record is how it conjures the kind of romantic air I associate with albums like Nefertiti or Kind of Blue but in a diurnal sense versus those deeply nocturnal records. This kind of relaxed, warm and smiling music strikes me most often as best scoring the ruminations of the night, be it under candles or dimmed electric light, the dark wood of end tables and the leather of sofas glowing bronze. Here, however, it’s like Sunday afternoon eternally, that specific kind placidity attained after a few days’ rest before returning to the grind. You can practically see your family’s smiling faces in the other room. A way to understand the motive of the record might be through the lens of Radiohead with the weights reversed. There, soul and R&B exist in the chordal structures of the music as a firm songwriting backbone against which the active-tense avant-gardeisms of the electronics and production tricks make up what we most often associate with them. Here, those avant-garde textures, burbles, scrapes and glitches exist two or three layers down, with piano sitting atop everything and ambient textures and vocals slurred in a honeyed haze just below. Ironically, this can provide a funny kind of problem, where some of the more sophisticated and lovely chord voicings and voice movements of the piano parts can pass you by as those interesting flourishes temporarily draw your attention away.
Under A Familiar Sun is a wonderful testament to patience. It went from an album that struck me as merely competent but uninteresting on the first few passes to being a constant companion as I read, as I write, as I’ve begun to ponder next moves in my recent unemployment. Some records demand attention of you in a way that makes them the centerpieces of their runtime. This sits in glowing, burbling beauty as a score to the life you already live. It is supportive and kind without being hackneyed or corny. Clearly, Sam Beste’s ear and his heart is in the traditional beauty of piano-driven soul-jazz, a domain more fundamental to music written from the ’50s forward than anything but the blues and perhaps Tin Pan Alley. His modernizing touches are grace notes meant to cut past the accumulated wreckage that separates us from the ability to earnestly engage with that kind of material without conjuring a bunch of cluttering associations that ultimately distance us from the intimate thing. This is a record that’s as natural as it is beautiful; it feels like every note placed itself organically without a guiding hand rather than having the occasional artificiality as some more advanced compositions. It is nourishing to receive such a subtle and lovely thing.
Label: RVNG Intl
Year: 2025
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