Jim Jarmusch stands amongst contemporary cinema’s finest and most distinctive film directors. But he’s also a musician, and for a while now, SQÜRL, his partnership with Carter Logan, has provided the scores for a handful of the filmmaker’s more recent films. Silver Haze is the endeavor’s first full-length album (excluding soundtracks) and the contents are as expansive yet cohesive and reflective of Jarmusch’s thematic concerns. It’s out now on compact disc and digital through Sacred Bones; the silver vinyl ships in August. There is also a 300-copy mail order exclusive edition pressed on “black and white haze” vinyl.
When the musical activities of Jim Jarmusch are the topic of discussion, it’s always worth noting that he was a member of The Del-Byzantines, an outfit often categorized as part of New York City’s No Wave scene, that cut the “Girl’s Imagination” 12-inch EP, the Lies to Live By LP, and the “Draft Riot” 7-inch in 1981-’82, all on the Beggars Banquet subsidiary Don’t Fall Off The Mountain.
The Del-Byzantines are worth bringing up mainly so that folks do go assuming that Jarmusch is some undisciplined and arrogant musical dabbler rather than a legit multihyphenate. And including artist-filmmaker James Nares and writer Lucy Sante (then Luc Sante), The Del-Byzantines was a band of multihyphenates; they also had two songs land on the soundtrack to director Wim Wenders’ 1982 film The State of Things.
It’s been reported more than once the film stock leftover from The State of Things was used the shoot the opening portion of Jarmusch’s 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise. Wenders and Jarmusch have deeper connections, including frequently tapping the services of Robby Müller; amongst other films for both, he shot Wenders’ first feature Summer in the City (1970) and Jarmusch’s third Down by Law (1986). There’s also SQÜRL’s 2020 release Some Music for Robby Müller, which featured soundtrack recordings for Living the Light, Claire Pijman’s documentary on the late great cinematographer.
Given the above background, it’s easy to speculate that Silver Haze’s opener “Berlin ’87” references Wenders’ 1987 film Wings of Desire, which was set in Berlin. It’s an instrumental track that oozes a doomy and metallic sensibility, not a first for SQÜRL, though this time they’ve hooked up with producer Randall Dunn, whose noted for his work with Sunn O))), Boris, and Earth.
With the input of bassist Arjan Miranda (who plays on the entire album) and cellist Brent Arnold, SQÜRL and Dunn get the atmospheric heaviness just right. They retain this textural thud in “The End of the World” as a backdrop for Jarmusch’s spoken apocalyptic narrative. In lesser hands, this combination be an unimpressive mess of laziness masked as ambition, but SQÜRL pull it off, largely because Jarmusch is more interested in imagery than linguistic gymnastics.
Silver Haze reinforces Jarmusch as a solid collaborator, not just with Logan and Miranda but with the records high-profile guests, including guitarist Marc Ribot, who elevates the gorgeous drift of the instrumental “Garden of Glass Flowers” and lays down some thicker riffs in “She Don’t Wanna Talk About It” as Jarmusch engages in a dialogue with guest vocalist Anika.
There seems to be a strategy here to largely alternate instrumentals and vocal numbers, as side two opens with “Il Deserto Rosso,” Ribot contributing one more time to a mum’s the word scenario that got me to thinking of A Silver Mt. Zion. It leads into one of the album’s standouts, “John Ashbery Takes a Walk,” which features Charlotte Gainsbourg reading a pair of early poems by the titular NYC poet “Le livre est sur la table” and “Some Trees,” as the band surrounds her with robust heavy psych.
A hard act to follow to be sure, but “Queen Elizabeth” pulls it off as Jarmusch’s voice booms like Lee Hazelwood in an echoey airplane hangar. In closing Silver Haze, title track stretches out and is also the most up-tempo piece on the record, though that doesn’t mean it’s speedy. It does work up a hazy cloud of distortion before winding down.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
