Damon & Naomi
Earth is Blue
(20/20/20)

I haven't gazed at my shoes in a long time. But I remember a moment in 1993 sitting in Pita Jungle with friends listening to Slowdive playing in the background eating dinner before we headed out to see Alison’s Halo. One of my friends was arguing about whether or not Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine would ever put out another album. His theory was that the disk, Loveless, had taken the guitar to the furthest point you could go from its roots. “Unless Shields goes down to Sun Studios in Nashville and starts the whole process over, he’s finished.” I told my friend he was full of it. They would have something new out soon. I was wrong. Today, My Bloody Valentine is history, like shoegazing. Damon & Naomi have much history, but they are not history. They remind me of Frank Black. Not musically, but in the sense that these are artists who continue to live in the present and move forward through time, but reviewers like myself look at their present through clouded memories of their past. In 2004 Frank finally gave in to our desire and revived his former Boston band, The Pixies, for a nostalgia tour. I must confess, I’m grateful he did, but I’m equally grateful that Damon & Naomi haven’t united with their old Boston band, Galaxie 500. A box set is just fine. The Earth is Blue, their current release, maintains a balance of using the past to move into the future. Together, with Japanese guitarist, Michio Kurihara, Damon & Naomi have declared, “This is our music, today!” Where they were once on fire with beautiful noise, Blue is an ocean of beautiful melody. The cover of this disk is a picture of water and sky connecting on the horizon with a concrete barricade at the bottom covered with carved harts. This is a perfect metaphor for the music inside. The beautiful noise of Kurihara’s guitar rains down on us and becomes part of this melodic sea. But most of the sound wall has crumbled. In its place is warmth that only a return to the sun can bring. Blue is a blend of contrasting musical structures. For example, Kurihara’s guitar work at the end of track four, “House of Glass,” drifts like a kite in the wind. The next track, “Sometimes,” bobs up and down in a steady rhythm sounding like the grandchild of a song recorded in Topanga Cannon around 1972. Then comes a jazzy reworking of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Although the songs have three different musical structures they are blended together through tempo and tone. From beginning to end, these musical sifts create the ebb and flow of Blue. All the songs are balanced like the ocean and sky on the horizon. Obviously, Damon & Naomi stopped looking at their feet years ago and have set their gaze on that horizon.

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