Marc Ribot – Map Of A Blue City (New West Records)
Marc Ribot is a musician you’ve probably never heard of but more than likely you’ve heard his music.
Since the mid-1980s Ribot has been a ‘go-to’ session guitarist playing alongside musical greats such as Elvis Costello, Wilson Pickett, Marianne Faithfull, Solomon Burke, The Black Keys, T. Bone Burnett, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to name just a few.
He’s credited with being instrumental in helping Tom Waits carve out his niche working on Waits’ 1985 album Rain Dogs following up with sleeve credits on Franks Wild Years, Big Time, Mule Variations, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards and Bad As Me.
Ribot has also recorded 28 albums of film soundtracks, collaborations and his own music with bands Rootless Cosmopolitans, Shrek, The Young Philadelphians and his current ensemble Ceramic Dog.
So far, a pretty impressive record.
With his latest release Map of a Blue City Ribot takes us on a journey into an alternative and very personal world with a collection of songs that have been knocking around his guitar case for the past 30 years.
The album was engineered and mixed by Ben Greenberg based on original studio sessions produced by Hal Willner, as well as home recordings that showcase his immense talent across a spectrum of musical genres from roots, bossa nova, now wave, noise and some that haven’t even been named, as yet.
The record’s title comes from an interaction with Ribot’s daughter after she’d drawn a city map in a deep, rich and vivid blue. After praising her she replied “It’s not a blue map, but a map of a blue city.”
The idea stuck with him, eventually inspiring the title track, a laid-back stripped-back song exploring what it’s like to be directionless and aimless but with the hope of endless possibilities, over a simple guitar, triangle, sound effects and reverb.
The song opens with the line “I’m not lost, I’m just aimless – I could go home anytime I wanted,” but not just yet, there’s “empty spaces… times and places” to “Build the city of your dreams.”
Despite the absence of a multitude of instruments, the song has the dreamy quality of the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: it’s an invitation to come on a weird journey through Ribot’s musical world led by his wondrous guitar and gentle voice.
That world is replete with a variety of sounds, styles and themes all very personal to Ribot.
He pay homage to his late father in two of those songs: Daddy’s Trip to Brazil and Elizabeth.
The first is a humorous yet painful song over a Bossa Nova rhythm reminiscent of Wait’s Frank’s Wild Years.
Daddy in the song has no interest in why he’s in Brazil, or revisiting previous good times.
“If you really want to help me out, Close the window and call the bell captain. And tell him to please do something About the sound of those fucking waves,” Ribot half-murmurs over a song that you can’t help shimmy to despite the sad drawn-out strings in the background.
In the song Elizabeth the simple guitar (a $20 instrument borrowed from a friend and never returned) with the mournful strings of Christina Courtin, Pico Alt and Christopher Hoffman provide the backdrop for Ribot’s poetic description of his father’s last moments –
That’s how we prayed around your bed.
As your frail heart beat out its last tattoo
Until the morphine could no more
And we sat weeping in our impotence.
Ribot’s composition, seemingly simple, blends beautifully with the heart-wrenching words, emotion bubbling just beneath the surface.
In the song For Celia, inspired by his friend documentary filmmaker Celia Loewenstein, Ribot explores the Siren myth from the German Lorelei perspective. Should we condemn the Siren for others’ failings when they fall in love?
The cruelest of God’s cruel inventions
To make us love these bad intentions.
It’s an absolution from responsibility, of sorts, the backing track a nod to the classic movie Paris Texas, another story of a man’s downfall after love spurned.
These are real emotions heartfully delivered.
Ribot includes a couple of covers on this record.
When the World’s on Fire is an apocalyptic vision penned in the 1920s that has real relevance to today’s constant terrifying headlines; and Allen Ginsberg’s Sometime Jailhouse Blues.
Ginsberg’s poem is a lament from a weary convict as he awaits his final reckoning. Ribot employs the traditional 12-bar structure but the guitar is curiously more melodic than you’d expect adding a beauty and tenderness to an otherwise bleak scenario.
Map of a Blue City ends on the instrumental Optimism of the Spirit borrowing its title from words written by Antonio Gramsci after being imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime:
“The proper attitude for a revolutionary in these times is pessimism of the intelligence, but optimism of the spirit”
It may seem dark and pointless as we head toward the dead end of oblivion, but that’s no reason to give up hope!
Ribot’s alternative world may seem strange and uncomfortable at times but Map of a Blue City helps us navigate to a place of deeper understanding.
Alex Robertson
Map Of A Blue City is out now on New West Records
