Tunes Consumed: the Poutine Silver Platter

If it wasn’t for the guitar and the way it’s anchored on his knee, this photo could very easily be PR for the next best-selling self-help book, though it would be so very wrong to say Sir Richard lands among so many books to nourish his ego or as publicity; he’s carefully and well read, particularly on Eastern philosophy and Hindu mythology and his latest three-piece full-length While My Guitar Violently Bleeds reads like a spiritual journey; each song is an acoustic epilogue which in turn pays homage to a particular deity, state of mind, or Eastern transcendental yearning.

It would be hard to pin down an interpretation from my background, and so the best description I can muster up comes from an old essay written by Sir John Woodroffe in 1918:

“[T]he Sadhaka becomes more and more freed from the darkness of Samsara and is attached to nothing, hates nothing, is ashamed of nothing … and has freed himself of the artificial bonds of family, caste, and society. He becomes an Avadhuta, that is, one who has ‘washed off’ everything and has relinquished the world. Of these, as stated later, there are several classes. For him there is no rule of time or place. He becomes, like Shiva himself, a dweller in the cremation ground (Smashana).”

I can’t say for sure whether I’ve been enlightened yet, but the way he plays — termed “protean guitar” (which means literally “to constantly shift in form, meaning, style and shape”) — has an appeal entirely apart from that; it’s like self-help for the acoustic mind, and in a generation like ours so wrought with loop stations and Echoplexes, it has a certain something that can’t ever be duped by machines, and that something sounds delicious.

Sir Richard is finishing off the last of his tour with Animal Collective and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds hits the streets June 19th from Locust Music. Also, there’s an interview with him here about the new record and other things (from the fine folks at Foxy Digitalis).

mp3:
Sir Richard Bishop - Mahavidya