Valentine’s Day isn’t just for lovers; it’s also a day to celebrate family and friends. Water & Music is a love letter to nature and genealogy, an “unlikely quarter” that speaks across the ages to the ties that bind.
Monty Callaghan (Climes)’ sonic expedition began when he heard tapes his father had recorded of his grandmother playing piano in 1980. Shortly after, he found tapes of his mother’s mother singing, stretching from 1998-2011. Remembering tapes he’d made of his own friend Sölvi Kolbeinsson playing saxophone in 2018-19, Callaghan began to create a musical collage: sampling, rearranging, and adding music and field recordings to flesh out a story of intertwined lives, connected by sound.
Water & Music is the closest a record album can get to a photograph album. Changing tracks is like flipping pages. Like most photo albums, it’s also carefully curated to present the best of the stories involved; Callaghan recalls one grandmother singing at a family gathering, another nestled in her chair, completing crosswords. The track title “Spirits Reign (Through the Vein of Time)” is an apt description of the life-affirming message: those we love, even though they leave, are always with us, and our hearts are always with them.
The album opens with saxophone and water, representing the seas of time. The idea of flow is visually present in Jordan James Kaye accompanying, album-length video. “We must break this spell, the cloud that we’re under,” sings Climes’ grandmother, the album’s first words, accompanied by a crack of thunder. The rest of the album accomplishes this task. A child’s voice surfaces in the second piece, furthering the generational connection; then the first operatic vocals, beamed from half a century earlier but likely representing the writing of at least half a century before that.
By “Clipped Wings,” the listener begins to wonder why these grandmothers never became famous; here is one, playing sumptuous cascades of ivory notes, while the other sings, her voice looped, as if both are present in the same room at the same time, with Callaghan contributing all manner of accompanying music. Perhaps the most famous cross-time duet is that of Natalie and Nat King Cole, performing “Unforgettable;” Water & Music deepens this approach, suggesting that the conversations we have with lost loved ones need not remain only in our heads.
A quick internet search reveals that Sölvi Kolbeinsson is alive and active, walking a remarkably similar path, so much so that his latest collaborative album is titled Collage and looks back on his twenties, when he lived in Copenhagen and Berlin before returning to Reykjavik. Add the fact that one track is titled “Clouds” and three are “Weather Variations,” one can see how these musicians are friends. One wonders if the conversation at the end of “Mercury Spring” captures them in those innocent pre-Covid years.
The Irish word amú means squandered, and the melancholic track of the same title underlines its tone. One can’t help but wonder at the intimations of regret. The fact that these recordings exist speaks to the value of these grandmothers’ musical talents, and the impact they had on two later generations. In each instance – piano and vocal – the impact is not only technical, but emotional; these women feel the music and imbue it with meaning, while their grandson embeds their music in settings that amplify its poignancy.
The title of the closing piece, “Love Streams,” can be read as adjective and noun or noun and verb. As the form of water shifts from rain to stream, one hears the physical component; but love also streams down through the generations, a current of care that keeps one’s descendants afloat, and flows backward in reverence and thanksgiving. We wish all ACL readers a happy Valentine’s Day ~ may you love and be loved in return. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 