Bilders: Dustbin of Empathy/Nictate (digital outlets)

It would be a brave or foolhardy soul who attempted to write the biography of Bill Direen.

Even just a discography would be a Sisyphean task: no sooner had you made the last entry than overnight he has recorded another album which arrives, perhaps even with a book of poems.

Or in the case of this new collection, a 15-song album Dustbin of Empathy (digital and on limited edition 300 copies vinyl) with the 21-song Nictate cassette (limited edition 100 copies).

Direen's Bilders seems an open-ended concept as players come and go, in this iteration – his US Bilders – is Direen with Matt Swanson and Alex McManus of Lambchop.

These players are on the Dustbin of Empathy album which takes a low-key, intimate approach to allow Direen's poetic lyrics real prominence: “We work, we sweat, earn what we get. A stab in the back, a debt so deep, wear out the shoe for a bad night’s sleep” on Bad Night's Sleep.

In his distinctively and deliberately frail voice he brings real pathos to the intimate Scaribus with lap steel guitar: “Them who’ll follow the guide even when he’s just deaf and blind, believin’ it. And if this is what a happy couple will get up to well Na Na Na! Better leave the world in the hands of the corrupt.”

There are gently beautiful, left-field pop songs here (Caprice and Nemesis), allusions to the mythic (My Father's Enemy) and embedded cultural memories, as on the folksy Comrades: “Some voices I will never hear again, did not live as long as I do. But their songs, we remember them well. Their songs, we remember them true. A voice may sing and sing again, the song of many
lives longer than the man”.

My Father's Enemy

 

There's a melancholy and darkness throughout and when it is delivered with scraping guitars and urgency on Anvil Dark there's a real sense of menacing, Bad Seeds doom: “An anvil dark sends up a spark, a field turns black, the reaper smiles at his new shoes. Then off he goes stickin’ his nose in our affairs.”

On The Weevil – a spoken word piece – Direen creates a nefarious character with his tentacles everywhere: “Today his empire stretches to the corners of the earth. He can give you the time in New York, Istanbul and Perth. He can give you a healthy estimate of what one life is worth”.

Dustbin of Empathy is another excellent, entrancing and slightly chilling Direen album . . . which takes you naturally to the Nictate cassette, which opens with songs by the US Bilders which Direen calls spillovers from the Dustbin sessions.

That almost seems dismissive of the songs but there are some real gems here, not the least the threatening and disconcerting This is Tomorrow.

This is Tomorrow

 

With guests Tony Crow of Lambchop on piano, Hawk and a Hacksaw's Heather Trost (violin) and Jeremy Barnes on accordion (Hawk and a Hacksaw, Neutral Milk Hotel), the cassette gets off to a terrific start.

The bulk of the tape is given over to the Otago Bilders: Direen, composer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Cournane, William Henry Meung (found instruments) and long-timefriend/violinist Alan Starrett (who also plays erhu).

These are miniatures, all but two under two minutes. These take their lead from Direen's poetry collection 100 Years of Darkness published last year and come with quirky, disruptive or supportive music and/or sounds.

C​á​nh d​ô​̀​ng hoang

 

We warned at the outset the prolific nature of Direen: an album, a cassette, a book of 80+ poems.

Good luck if you're considering writing Bill's biography.

Or even just compiling a discography.

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The poetry collection 100 Years of Darkness is Direen's responses to various films across a wide range of genres and decades and languages.

It is available from South Indies here. 

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You can hear and buy Dustbin of Empathy at bandcamp here.

You can hear and buy Nictate as a cassette or download at bandcamp here. 

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