James Wallace and the Naked Light
Daytrotter Session - May 1, 2013
- The Wire (Reprise) / Kicked Down The Road
- The Coming
- To The River
- Worse Things Have Happened
We think that James Wallace believes more in the longevity of the world than he lets on. The thing is, he lets on that he believes in it, but he passes these sentiments on in a slightly backhanded way. He’s an admirer – a great one at that – of beauty in faces, in shiny hearts and in what’s still out there to discover. He believes in dreams and has many of his own that he’d like to check on. Even the naked light that he attaches to the name of his musical project is some kind of celebration to the very easy and simple act of just living it out letting it feel you, just as much as you feeling it. It’s that light that’s unprocessed, that feels like it’s sneakily coming upon you.
Wallace writes like a post-romantic, or a mid-romantic. He’s seen too much and not seen anything yet. He embraces the thoughts of broken souls – considering that he may well be (in fact is certain that he is) one. He listens to these broken souls and he transcribes what they tell him – what he tells himself. He’s sure that things are about to get better and they’re going to get worse too, but they’ll take their turns, just like cars at a stop sign, alternating in a predetermined fashion. One of the most charming songs in this session is entitled, “To The River,” and it’s a story about a girl asking him to follow her down to the water to see something. He asked her why they were heading to the river and she told him that typically when the stars fall in they just turn to water and this time, more were turning to blood than water and she feared that the world was ending, so she wanted to spend that time with him, to watch what could be the end together.
Things weren’t ending though. It was a false alarm. There’s no telling what caused the circumstances that she was so worried about, but the problem then became a matter of cleaning up all the fallen stars and all the blood that some of them turned into. The warning is something that factors into the general sense that Wallace takes with the creation of his musical world – where there’s always something redeeming to be latched onto, where there’s a feeling that there’s a stay of execution and, for that, there should be much rejoicing. There should be dancing and loving. There should be an adjustment made to grow the light.