‘Stop what you’re doing and sit down and twist the lines around you‘ says Dara Higgins of Daniel Higgs‘ The Godward Journey Too many possibilities, too much practice” says Daniel at the overture of this work, a meandering piece of banjo and occasional vocals, with a harmonium interlude. Coming in at just under twenty five minutes, it is a journey. An oddly dislocating, but not at all unpleasant one. Best enjoyed when there’s no distractions.
Is this devotional music? In the sense that by making your noise you are giving praise, praise to the thing that makes us want to make our noise. We make it in any way we can. Some of us are lucky with words or banjos, and that helps. Others just wail and scream and kick. Whatever it takes. Throughout the journey Higgs gives praise in his way, to singing and springtime and life in general, weaving some imagery just with his fingers. The repetition of the banjo motif keeps bringing it back to a place of increasing familiarity, so when he goes off on one, we’re not too disoriented.
Stop what you’re doing and sit down and twist the lines around you. Imagine yourself somewhere deep and dark and green watching the sky above your head, above the tree line, and everything up there: shooting stars and satellites and the other planets twinkling in and out of view. And the stars, and all that dead light. Or whatever you fancy yourself, as long as it’s a nice place to go to.
Higgs has been fairly prolific, it seems, doing his own thing, collaborating and releasing an album with Lungfish every year or two. The man just wants to make the music, and why the fuck not?
