by Joe Gutierrez
Each time I put on Kleinmeister, it feels as if I’m stepping into a realm separate from my own. Everything is slightly warped, a little shimmery. Specific lines or dips of melody frame the work in not-quite-this-dimension. What I recognize of reality shifts, each song revealing shivers in its fabric. I am in awe of Ruth Garbus’ lyricism, cascades of wacky observations and moving affirmations tickling my brain with glee. New images are uncovered upon continuous encounters. Kleinmeister feels like one of those portable holes cartoon characters carry around when they want to disappear.
My ears conjure up memories of the voices of Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane), Arthur Lee (Love), Tim Buckley, even Elliott Smith. The aural landscapes of Gary Higgins, Linda Perhacs, Jim Sullivan, Sibylle Baier, and other exhumed freaky folk masterpieces straddling the line between earthy and mystic. Kleinmeister parallels cinema, magic-tinged mundanity flashing across eyelids, scenes triggered by sound and silence. Garbus invites us places- the gas bar, her studio, downtown, a box store, the big white house, the white hotel. She introduces us to characters: Jesus, God, the Devil, Aaron, Fetty Wah, Ruth’s uncles and pa, an angel, Venus, Aphrodite, Mr. Mike, and Leppy (her stuffed animal).
“Strash” opens with fluttery strumming, chords cloaked in flanger. Julia Tadlock’s accompanying vocals soar beneath Garbus’ words, incandescent coos deploying an ethereal calm, despite the doom and decay splayed out through the lyrics. The word choice and delivery ignites the senses. You can smell the “wet cardboard steam” and “insurmountable heaps, hot and green” as Ruth lullabies a giant pile of trash. She repeats lines, but sings them differently as time flies, emphasizing their meaning or trying to twist a new meaning out of them. “Pitiful Poetry” emerges as a simple picked progression, a slight variation of finger placement on the fretboard—this can plunge one into a new mood suddenly and abruptly.
Garbus cartwheels between personas, throwing out demands to round up her enemies and then sighing, hunching over in discontent. Lines like “I’m not willing to say that everything’s bad/but I’m sad” or “Is it okay to feel not okay?” reflect a settling, coming to terms with what you feel. On “Pain,” with an odd tinge of doubt, Ruth spills, “Brains/The soft machine/that works for me?” It escapes her throat as a question, a second guessing. She flirts with spirituality, pleading, “Jesus, give me direction”. Then the Devil shows up to say she “ain’t really living.” Kleinmeister is full of grasps like this, yearnings for clarity, a light shined on the mysterious act of being a human being on this planet Earth. “In my utopia, all living things are honored and dear.” How can a record with a line like that not convince you to put a little faith in it?