Transform Online
18th February 2005, Transform Online
Recording band practice? Bad idea… unless Joe Lally’s in your band.
The biggest risk of an album-every-month project, like the one John Frusciante has embarked upon, is a lack of quality control. One wouldn’t expect an opus to come out of such prodigious and hasty output, but one of the benefits of this is a greater chance that what emerges will be less fettered by extensive revision and the toll of a long studio stay.
It’s appropriate, then, that Ataxia (consisting of Frusciante, frequent collaborator Josh Klinghoffer, and Fugazi bassist Joe Lally) dubbed their first record Automatic Writing, a practice borrowed and developed to a great extent by 20th century surrealists. They depended so much on the concept, in fact, that in Andre Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, he defines surrealism as: “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought.â€
More ambitious then, that Ataxia try to tackle automatic writing both lyrically and musically. In the process, they would improvise a tune and Frusciante would spend the night writing lyrics for it. Eventually, they spent four days cranking out the finished product live in the studio, adding some synths and other treatments on top.
So is it successful? Yes and no. In the same way that Breton, while he was a fabulous mouthpiece for surrealism, was too self-conscious of what he was doing for his own automatic writing to avoid an air of contrivance, Ataxia’s jams do little to transcend the existing borders of rock improvisation. It’s a difficult hurdle to overcome given the group setting: unless you believe in telepathy, the truth is that the musicians have to filter that “actual functioning of thought†to the extent that they can communicate with each other. So there are concessions: straight time signatures and comfortable tempos saddle the album with a monotonous pace.
But outside of all that bothersome conceptuality, Automatic Writing is a pretty good listen. If you’re going to jam. Joe Lally’s a pretty good choice for bass. His lines on “Dust†and “The Sides†are interesting and predictably airtight. When they’re on, Klinghoffer’s drumming sits perfectly with Lally and really gives a boost to Frusciante’s noodling. When they’re not on, 10 minutes can feel like an hour. Klinghoffer seems to have a case of the slows on “Addition†and coupled with Frusciante’s nasal drone, the song drags on like a wounded animal. But on “Montreal,†said drone transmutes into a dead ringer for The Blackheart Procession’s Pall Jenkins, and at 12 1/2 minutes, it’s the album’s longest, darkest and eeriest song, with Frusciante crooning, “I’m going to Montreal / I never had a clue†over painful pick scrapes and distant feedback. And even though the air of a jam session that shouldn’t have seen the light of day comes through in spots, the songs that really click make the project really worthwhile. It’ll be interesting to hear what comes out of Ataxia’s next effort.
By Dave Schutz
