Farewell Spit: Castaway

An album review of the latest from Wellington-based improvisers supreme: Farewell Spit, now a sextet, previously a quartet

Farewell Spit

Castaway

iii Records

Farewell Spit featured Jeff Henderson on piano, Daniel Beban on guitar, Tom Callwood on double bass and Riki Gooch on drums for their 2022 self-titled release. Here, with their latest, the quartet retains those members, and that instrumentation, but the group is now a sextet with the additions of drummer Anthony Donaldson providing percussion and Shayne Carter on second guitar, or in fact a lead guitar that hides and growls from the shadows, while Beban elicits licks and tricks from his ‘prepared’ guitar, ratcheting it to sound like the squall of the waves and the wind as, variously, a synthesizer, extra piano, further percussion, and all-around sound-design/sound-FX sonic-manipulator.

The overall shape, and vibe of the album feels similar to The Necks’ 2017 album, Unfold, with Henderson (once upon a time primarily a saxophonist but most assuredly a multi-instrumentalist these days) certainly taking a few clues, if not cues, from the way Chris Abrahams sets up his recurring motifs to thread through side-length pieces of music.

The swell of the drums and bass, the constant build, has hints of The Necks also, and comparable units such as Dawn of Midi, but is also rooted in the work these musicians have, collectively and independently, been mining for more than a quarter of a century.

If the name Shayne Carter seems incongruous here, don’t be fooled. Not only is he a transplanted Wellingtonian these days, he’s also far more the sonic shapeshifter than his marquee name via Straitjacket Fits and then Dimmer might at first allow. Particularly for anyone who knows his work as a soundtrack composer, his contributions here will not surprise, but will absolutely delight.

The album begins with Castaway Part 1 and Part II across 35 minutes, the opening 20 minute piece a slow, steady build that evokes the eventual storm, Henderson’s piano getting things going as the band builds in sound and mood around him. That idea restarts, is revisited, as the slightly shorter Part II begins in shimmer, Donaldson’s percussion dancing into view as the guitars provide the whistle of wind through the tunnel of the tune. A tattoo is build across the drums and the guitars buzz and chime around this, as the rhythmic dance subtly escalates. At any given moment you can get lost in an individual instrument here, and then again at how they are all fitting in and around each other, all listening, all working as if one, combining to form the pistons that fire the music.

The second half of the album features Rage of Elements Part I and Part II, again beginning with a 20 minute piece, and then, the shortest track here (Part II) still clocking 12 minutes. It’s a big slab of music, a sprawl across the four parts that can — and should — be listened to as a whole, as one piece that builds and falls and rebuilds. And as the title would suggest, where Castaway is about the shipwreck and storm and gives pause to ponder, Rage of Elements features more frolic and is about the new world, the new conditions, the new home being build deep inside of this sound. And so we have the prepared guitar of Beban, and the electric guitar of Carter locked in spirals around the darker, but still reassuring piano and bass motifs.

Recorded in one day — essentially built and dismantled on the day — Castaway is a capture of the momentary monument this sound-collective so ably demonstrates and destroys, dismantling the music as a part of the composition.

The serene reawakening that opens Rage of Elements Part II is of course misleading, not so much a misdirection as a glimmer of fresh hope in the storm of this music. But this is all glimmers of hope. Even at its most chaotic — and the music is here is supremely controlled — it is never abrasive in the extreme, never falling into noise for the sake of it, always a form of music emerging through the storm, like shadow drawings and scribble patterns that hide a form in plain sight.

Something happens while you listen to Castaway — well two things happen: This band is reawakened in spirit, their music live again and living in this moment. And the listener has catharsis through following along; is brought on a journey that is felt at every step of the way, evoked, enlivened, emboldened, and of course elation is our final destination.