186: Rebecca Schiffman - Before The Future
It takes a little heart and a lotta guts to open your album with a meandering, even-paced nine-minute story song, but we're in safe hands here. Released just last week, Before The Future is the latest work from NYC songwriter Rebecca Schiffman and it starts just like that; a winding tale of life and death that drifts and gently rolls forward, finally bringing the curtain down on the world it creates just as it passes the nine-minute mark.
It's a mesmerising piece of work, the opening song – and title-track – of her first album in a full nine years. What follows is suitably excellent – smart, sophisticated songwriting that feels suitably, equally compelling, sometimes just as hazy, occasionally a much more rough and ready approach to it all. The album was made alongside the likes of Chris Cohen (whose own swaying sound feels notable across the LP), the excellent Sasami, and Here We Go Magic's Luke Temple among others.
That title-track, though.
It begins at the beginning of a memory: "...that warm glow took me back to 5th Avenue, sandy limestone in the sunlit afternoon," she sings, taking us back to the embers of childhood days, "before the future was in the past." From there we get flashes of memory, a picture-book of sorts, all changing weather and changing relationships.
The playing is subtle and understated, shuffling drums, small shimmers of guitars, that support the weight, allowing Schiffman's voice to tell and tell, sketching out scenes in colourful detail, just enough detachment for it all to feel like something of a dream, the surrounding circumstances blurred and falling away.
Starting the record this way feels like a bold move, a striking kind of spectacle that could have overwhelmed everything that follows, but maybe it's impact is to simply bring you right into the heart of Schiffman's world so that you won't want to go anywhere else until the whole thing has drawn to a close.
And you shouldn't, because this is wonderful. Dig in, dig in.
Before The Future is out now, and available via Bandcamp
