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Herman Düne - Giant (Source Etc) |
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Words: Shane Moritz
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Illustration: Daryl Waller
When I feel a bit bent in the head, or
a trifle wobbly in the knee, Herman
Düne – three Swedish cowboys and
their little sister Lisa – provide a lovely
sonic pillow. Not that they are soft,
but occasionally they do rhyme.
“I could sing it in a song or play it on
a kazoo and you would know how
bad I want to be with you,” rhymes
David Herman Düne on the Fred Neillite
ditty, ‘123 Apple Tree’ off Düne’s
eighth, the superhuman Giant.
“You say you dye your hair black
since you were 17/And you say it goes
well with your eyes so green/And I’ve
been losing my hair and my eyes are
blue/You know how bad I want to
be with you,” he rhymes a bit later,
and suddenly I have the urge to
burrow into his considerable bosom
of song like a dying street hustler
in the arms of a Midnight Cowboy.
Lushly recorded live, in-tune, on-time
and in handsome hi-fi in a mystical
part of North Wales where giants
roam, the new album is an exquisite
exponent in folk exotica, a type of
soul food. Every track is a witty trek
with classic, bearded chaps discerning
the world in a funky fashion. Oh,
and its fragile beauty absolutely
incinerates the heart!
If earlier albums sound like
Mo Tucker going solo, Giant is
Moondance meets Morricone with
the weight of Stephin Merritt’s wit.
Musically speaking, Neil Diamond
would risk a jail sentence to kidnap
these guys. Flavours of the South
Coast of France and ancient Europe
come to mind, even though I’ve never
been there, but I’ve seen it in faded
photographs and I feel it when I hear
it. The band brings the funk in the
form of Doctor Lori Schonberg,
a hyper-kinetic bongo player, who
despite being totally pumped to the
max, never loses his marbles. The
gentle, lyrical guitar play contains all
the sweet romance and heartache of
a Brontë novel. But the bottom line
here is, the brass and horns get all the
coolest riffs and Andre’s saxophone
burps pure warmth.
‘I Wish That I Could See You Soon’
is buoyant, ukulele pop that shreds
like Tiny Tim. The aptly-named
Woo-Woos, a choir of angels led by
sister Lisa, shine a bright light upon
the proceedings, while the boozy
horn section foreshadows the
fiesta David will have when his wish
comes true and he can see her soon.
Meanwhile ‘Nickel Chrome’ is like
two blue eyes (David’s?) staring out
of a dark, patchwork sky. “There’s
nothing like the sun through the
window coming in/There’s nothing
like the sun and the sunlight on your
skin,” sing the Woo-Woos in brilliant
harmony. ‘Bristol’, an ace Andre tune,
turns the quotidian into an artful spy
movie, a mood underscored brilliantly
by a descending bassline and a pack
of darting flutes. A song about a lame
baby deer and a medical baboon is
also very touching.
David’s heartache produces some
classic moments. See, his girl is in
New York and he is not there. He is
somewhere else cool; Paris, maybe
Berlin. He misses her, he’s miserable
and he is experiencing chronic
spooning withdrawals. He has a
bad case of Miss Misery. “It’s not
where they shot Ver-tig-o and it’s
not where they shot ET, but it’s
where he wants to go/Take him
back to New York City”, he muses
amusingly, with trademark fragility,
on Giant’s astounding centrepiece,
‘Take Him Back’.
‘When The Water Gets Cold’
ranks up there with Düne gems such
as ‘Metal Mash’ and ‘Why Would
That Hurt? (If You Never Loved Me)’.
A Leonard Cohen fix on a girl group
kick, the song’s reverb-heavy, high
lonesome kick-drum assumes the
heartbeat in this haunting sketch
of a poet. “There’s a lot of things
I’m doing I never thought I would
do/There’s a lot of places in the
world that I will never go to without
you/Right now I need to stay home
and I don’t need your company/Right
now I need to be alone and I need you
to stay away from me,” David sings,
decisive, devastating, as a saw whirrwhirr-
whirrs, faintly in the dark.
Language superstars, Herman
Düne absorb the world and
philosophise enchantingly like strange
novelists. ‘Glory of Old’ documents
a blissful poetry session: ”I don’t need
a table/I don’t need a drink/All I need
is a place to think.” Amen.
The restrained guitar stirs
me and, like the sorrowful theme
to Midnight Cowboy, it gets
permanently lodged inside the
foothills of my mellow mind.
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