Pure Night Plus 2xCD

JOHN DAVIS IN THE MUSEUM OF SONGS by Adam Green

I bought a cassette of John Davis’ “Stars and Songs” at Kim’s Underground Video store in 1995. I was 14 years old and I got it because I liked the homemade quality of the cover. Upon first listen I was completely mesmerized. I realized that John Davis was one of the most original songwriters of his generation, and it wasn’t long before his influence became pervasive in my work with the Moldy Peaches.

I’ve learned that John began his musical life as a drummer in a hardcore punk band in Cambridge, MA. He was exposed to outsider folk and lo-fi music through Daniel Johnston tapes, WHRB radio, and local shows at The Middle East club. In college he started a band with Will Oldham and began a musical correspondence with Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow, with whom he eventually formed the group “The Folk
Implosion.”

It was in lo-fi home recording that John discovered a universe. He seized upon intimacy as his medium, breaking down a barrier between himself and his tape recorder that has really never been matched. A true emotional stuntman, inside Davis is a spirit world where intimacy, violence, and mystical transcendence are one. His mission statement appears in one of his early songs, “there are borders everywhere, cross them.”

Like Skip Spence before him, in harnessing his personal universe John became a unique American visionary genius. The punk turned inward, Davis re-emerged as a shaman. On “Pure Night”, Davis’ dark album of dreams, he becomes our guide as he casts a spell bringing on the night and shows us “a place underground.” Throughout the album, fibrous textures and noises creak and moan as John drags his fingers over a 12 string guitar, exhibiting a painter-like understanding of song language. He hypnotizes us with strange repetitions on the Pixes-like incantation “Love You I” and the winding-melodic “Blind Love.”

One of Davis’ most exceptional songs is “Our World, Brained.” It is a disarming a cappella tune, somehow impenetrable, representing a time-capsule of his soul. When I listen to Davis’ music I get the sense that I am listening to field recordings of an interior landscape. Of this delicate intimacy and introspection he is the undisputed master.