photo by Ashley Boyd
A Generous, Ragged Spell
“If Jacob Milstein were to tell you to get in a van, only a few
irresponsible rags would do it. But if he sang you a song, anyone would
get in. Anyone would listen.
“More mystifying than mystical, more of a moon than a man, Milstein draws
comparisons to other (and older) twilit songsters from Leonard Cohen
to Karen Dalton, Neil Young to Nick Drake. But his newest album, As
Free As Wanting Anything, finds its path on the duskier, more mercurial
side of folk music near the rickety cabins of Townes Van Zandt and
Michael Hurley.
“As Free As Wanting Anything is an album mostly of love and loss songs,
of odes and elegies, to lovers and strangers, past-selves and friends,
but Milstein’s seemingly simple folk songs warp their seemingly
traditional structures and desires in wily and often eerie ways. As a
lyricist, he is a riddler and aphorist, a confused lover, a teller of
contradictory tales, a poet and peddler of non-sense in the alley. His
verses shift sharply and potently between choruses, and in this way a
song shot through with pain and loss like ‘Dear Echo’ spirals into a
joyous barroom romp, while the patient song ‘Been Alone So Long‘ slips
into a song remarking how loneliness has become the best kind of love.
The instrumentation is slight and provocative and reminiscent of the
outtakes of the outtakes of Beggar’s Banquet, full of twinkling pianos
and faint backup singers and distant drunken laughter. When you notice
that his lyrics have twisted into smoke, that his guitar-picking
has dropped off, it’s an obscurity that makes his songs all the more
haunting and enduring.”
text courtesy of Jacob Kahn, poet in the Bay Area and friend
the album As Free As Wanting Anything