Listen to Sean Meadows’ (June of 44) carefully collaged solo record from 2000
“Long-Stretch-Motorcycle-Hymn-Highway” by Everlasting The Way is the sole solo album by Sean Meadows of the recently reunited June of 44 (as well as Lungfish, The Letter E, The Sonora Pine, HiM and Red House Blues Revue. Did I forget anything? Oh, Kewl Haro).
First off, allow me a tangent: I’m listening to this record and wondering what I was doing in 2000. I was probably getting ready to move from Rhode Island to Minneapolis and, oh yeah, listening to June of 44 constantly. I was wondering about this because I couldn’t understand why — as a dude that was listening to June of 44 constantly — why didn’t I know that this record existed until last week? What excuse did I have?
And then I remembered: there was no social media.
In 2000 for someone to know about a record required one of the following to happen:*
Seeing an ad for it in a indie-rock zine
Reading a review of it (but that would require to read ALL of the reviews)
Being on a mailing list of a record label
Seeing it (or a poster for it) at a record store and having enough context to investigate (a description, relevant record label logo or “ex- members of” tag).
Since I Monitor Records barely existed (this is catalog #003) and I didn’t see a mention in Big Takeover magazine at the time, I literally had no idea that this record had been released. Which is a shame because it’s a great.
Repetition — usually of an acoustic guitar riff and sometimes a drum loop — lies at the heart of each of these songs and Meadows builds on top with additional guitars and percussion, as well as noise, bass, and occasionally singing. These elements fade in and out from song to song and they appear and disappear within the songs themselves.
It would be misleading to describe this as a hip-hop record but there’s a distinct rap production aesthetic at play. Bits of acoustic guitar stab these tracks in a way that sounds like a sample and one of the oddest elements of the record is that much of it is held together by horns (trumpet, I believe) that maintain the same sonic signature throughout the album. So you have this sound that keeps coming back but that doesn’t sound like it was recorded with the rest of the record.
The other thing that’s interesting is how well this works as an album and not as songs. There’s no “bangers” on here (or the acoustic equivalent of bangers). Instead its as if the whole LP is the song and there’s passages that rise and fall and suck you in. For me as someone that’s been thinking purely in terms of songs its, uh, what do people say, instructive?
All in all, a great record that you likely haven’t heard before.
* I will tell you point-blank: I don’t miss “when you had to really hunt to find stuff”. Spotify/Discogs gang all day.