Imaginary Johnny
No Air: Songs of Imaginary Johnny +1
© 2007 Unfinished Side Productions (634479514739)
No Air represents IJ's first real foray into the studio as a band, with prior recordings having a more painterly, cobbled together feel. No Air's starkness marks a departure for IJ, and the songs stand vividly on their own.
tracks
try this
albums you will love
- IMAGINARY JOHNNY: Only Chimneys
- IMAGINARY JOHNNY: Painting Over the Dirt
- IMAGINARY JOHNNY: The Upside of the Downside
genres you will love
By Location
Recommended if you like ...
notes
It was mostly Zach Barocas' idea. The band would venture south to J. Robbins' Baltimore studio to create something resembling a live album. In November 2005, Imaginary Johnny recorded and mixed this stark EP in two days with Zach on drums, Eric Morse on toy store miscellany, Adam Sylvia on guitar, and songwriter Stuart Wolferman on vocals and keys. This is the first IJ recording that can convincingly be called rock, and it maintains a journal entry kind of fascination.
This recording is available at iTunes, Audio Lunchbox, and other online stores.
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A review of IJ's live show by JunkMedia:
Imaginary Johnny at Sin-e - summer bliss, July 27th, 2006.
Postmodernism ate sincerity. Cynicism is the new irony. It's a very tiresome world of shrink-wrapped music and standard-issue thoughts. Cubicled, bored, tv-fed and hopelessly adult, we develop a defence reaction against a sincere soul. We forget and get good at avoiding reminders. Feeling acutely, as well as paying attention to what is not work-related, might have an adverse effect on our performance, no no no, we can't risk that. But once in a while, in a small dark space with a dirty floor, among ripped bar stools and beer bottles, music melts all armour off listening hearts, and we have nothing to do but take the uncalled-for gift of remembering.
Sunlight-striped floor on a summer morning when you were four. You woke up not a minute ago and through sleepy haze couldn't, just couldn't see the cause of your happiness. It probably was a little nothing - a new toy, a salty wave of a warm sea chasing after your bare feet, a rabbit-shaped cloud. There, on the brink of remembering, all possible joys of the vast world were yours, and you helplessly smiled to yourself.
Imaginary Johnny is that elusive little nothing. Acute and causeless bliss of their sound disarms. Its lush, intricate underlining is music spun from a swirl of routine city noises. Over it are melodies, forgive me a platitude, so beautiful they can make you cry. Each musical phrase is a peace pact, an exhale, a cool wet towel over pulsing pain. Stuart Wolferman (music, lyrics, vocals) was born with a luminous voice to match, a voice that you can, no kidding, see in the dark.
Tucked in between the deadly boring (Steve Northeast) and the obscene (the infamous Cock Lorge), Imaginary Johnny played a mismatched shared-bill show at Sin-e last week. A legend transplanted from St Mark's Place to the corner of Attorney and Stanton, Sin-e is now a tamer, gentler locale, with a faint memory of Jeff Buckley's stellar ascent still attached to it - a nebulous blessing, a chance to make it for anyone who takes the stage. Right now, if I could wish upon a rising star, it would be Imaginary Johnny's. Whens and ifs and money are in the way, as always; Stuart can easily strand you in between tears and laughter, but marketing wars are more often won by the loud shockers - makers of simpler, cruder art. There is also a question of whether a musician's success equals roaring hordes of fans. Still, if anything is still hinged on artistic merit and good happenstance, Imaginary Johnny are the first in line for being heard more widely.
The summery setlist was mostly songs from the full-length 'Painting Over Dirt', released, ironically, on the last day of winter. First there came a slow, heatwave-heavy version of 'Soupy Sidewalk' - an off-kilter hymn to every melting city in the world. Then, 'Missouri Sky', a gentle ode to hot summer mornings and tornado warnings of Kansas City, Stuart's hometown. 'Little Dimes', a scatter of round marbles on Stuart's tongue, is a digressive love song: She's got hard eyes, but there's something soft inside - like a jelly-bean. Further in, there is as good a metaphor for continuity of love as can be: We started with a shape on a canvas mostly clean. Now the canvas is a blur, the meaning is obscure. Extra points for rhyming 'James Joyce' with 'choice'... wait, want to know how Joyce got there? She reads like James Joyce - there isn't, I assume, anywhere to stop, and the further in, the more hopelessly entangled you are. And did you, would you ever notice that dice thrown onto a felt-covered casino tabletop sound exactly like shoes falling off a bed? They do.
On to 'Work Related' - of running from the law and mirrors: And if I'm fast enough, and if I'm quick enough, I'm invisible even to myself. On to 'Summer Day Dream', a song about absence as presence, and why you can savour the former. 'I forgot my wallet' is a space never taken by anger and irritation: It was raining again this morning. I forgot my wallet. Things weren't going my way. Yes, but somehow I walked for miles thinking bad thoughts. I'll get farther thinking better thoughts. And more - I have a garden now, and it's winter. Whatever you feel, I feel free... I don't ever want to need anyone that much again. No. This isn't soppy or self-help book 'positive'. This is a gentle, home-grown variety of zen. Every melody, too, is replete with witty squiggles and zigzags, and carries a meaning just as words do.
Also heard were three brand-new pieces - 'Fleas', 'A crack Between the Days' and 'Texas'.
Live, Stuart's voice is as rich with minute inflections as it is in the studio, though a little more nervous and labile. There is no between-the-songs banter - I've got new shoes, that's about it. Indeed, snow-white sneakers glow in the dark beneath the keyboard. There is zero fawning for the public, zero showing off, only honest-to-god music. The setup is minimalistic - besides Stuart's red Nord Stage piano, there is a guitar, a drum kit, a Mac with controller keyboard and some things from a toy store. The ensemble is noticeably well-rehearsed - the sound flows effortlessly.
With his disarming voice and words, Wolferman is a village savant of the most precious kind. He can melt our die-cast perception habits into a jolly soup of wisdom and little things that we would never, ever notice otherwise. By themselves, though pretty to tears, they might not mean much to you, might not seem weighty, but next time you look around, you'll find your own. So there you have it, a medicine that isn't bitter: music as children's syrup for adult forgetfulness.