Keith Freund – Constant Comments

It starts in the Riveria, in “Mont Boron” to be exact, with the sound of French boys playing basketball. A mother voices a brief correction, and a car honks twice with a keyless entry remote. Only now do the clean-tone guitars arrive in unassuming riffs: fragrant, agreeably lo-fi, and nothing too crafty or clever. Few discernible effects. If the liner notes told us that the guitar was also a field recording, that would be pretty easy to accept.

None of this would be terribly moving on its own, but the nostalgia and immediacy of this stimulus-and-response ethic catch the breath in the throat. The telltale static and imperfect volumes of the sample make clear that this was not a staged affair. Instead, a game began spontaneously under a hotel window, and the artist seems to have scrambled for his recorder. He takes a brief sample of the truly constant flow of ambient sound, and leaves a brief commentary of his own (guitar, normally), adding a little to the raw feed. Constant comments: the thesis for an album is born. In this case the artist is Keith Freund, Ohio-based singer and guitarist, founding member of Trouble Books, and former trumpet player for Six Parts Seven. His solo album is set for an August 16 release.

For those listeners who peruse the tracklist first, note the slightly mischievous sense of humor in the song titles: “The Rectumless Flight Of Angels,” “Deep Shit Sunburn,” or “Is Anything Too Hard For God?” (Fitting this particular project, the track titles really have no obvious connection back to the compositions, or to the field recordings.) Non-sequitur “Eye Colorism” takes us back to the playground — a game of tag this time — set to low-volume guitar swells which are largely crowded out by the field recordings. Many of the Comments here are short, clocking in at under two minutes, so eight-minute piece “The Ortzi” stands out quite literally. A slow and winking organ lick sets perhaps the most conventional tempo on the album, while parallel guitar lines weave a luxuriant adornment. The title borrows from an old Basque legend, meaning that lively conversation Freund recounts in installments was more likely recorded in San Sebastián than Madrid.

Speaking of Spain, the rainfall throughout “For Broke” completely reinvents the sub-genre of downpour songwriting. The track offers up the happy oblivion of steel under light precipitation. In an unrelated tempo — indeed, “untempo” might be a better way to describe it — detached guitar tinkering strides along for about half of the two minutes of rain. The metal turns out to belong to an automobile hood, or at least that is what Freund implies by the sound of a driver opening the door and getting out. In a nice narrative touch, “Everything Is Real!” takes up immediately after the door closes, changing guitar licks, and eventually changing thunderstorms. The exclamation point is unnecessary. It is already clear that “Everything” is a pretty serious exaggeration.

How to sum up a finite review about ongoing and infinite processes? About the endless stream of moments, and of how we add our own voice to the discussion, loudly or otherwise? For the record, Freund ends his inquiry with “For All Our Dead Pets,” a tongue-in-cheek title for the most intriguing composition on the album: sepia waves of lightly-treading guitar, and some kind of churning, well-manipulated field recording underneath. About the best we can offer is this: listen. On repeat.

- Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio

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