All Tiny Creatures
Daytrotter Session - Apr 11, 2012
- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Holography
- Aviation Class
- Reservoir
All that I can think about when I’m listening to All Tiny Creatures is old Super 8 film home movie footage from the 50s or 60s, something that my dad and mom could have starred in. Some of their childhood pets could have been woofing or getting scared into fluffed out tails, treed by the dog in question. There at the kitchen table or during a family vacation to Yellowstone National Park, I could have seen my aunts and uncles, not as women and men, but as the kids that they started out as. I could have seen my grandparents, not yet worn down by age, but rather standing proudly in front of the first new car that they ever bought, parked in the driveway, gleaming radiantly as the film proceeded only with the sound of the projector and its loud fan. As Wisconsin musicians Thomas Wincek, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Ben Derickson, and Matthew Skemp put together their intricate compositions of spare, then toasty and sometimes harried moments of groove-centered orchestration, I want to skip directly to the footage of the backyard BBQs and the games of tag – of children running around the front yard of the farm, nearly losing their legs and biffing face-first into the gravel driveway trying to get away from a speedy pursuer. I want to see all of this in black-and-white, with the music from the band’s latest album, “Harbors,” playing alongside it all, helping to give all of the scenes an added punch. It’s all the color needed as we slow down the younger legs, arms and faces of the middle-aged and older people that we now see before us. We just want to let their slow motion actions build and build to a crescendo that holds its feeling and doesn’t let down. It just picks up a little more steam and then a little more steam. At the very end of the picture, we just want someone to drop a you-see-it-coming-but-it-can’t-happen-fast-enough cannonball into a chilled and waiting swimming pool. You want to see the approach and the give in the diving board. You want to watch as the arms pulled those legs into a tight tuck. You want to watch the entrance into the water and then you want to see the splash blast all of the unsuspecting hens and sunbathers around the edges. The looks that the cannonball gets and the smile on the jumper’s face are how the songs end, all of it culminating into that perfect release.