Sean McCann - Open Resolve

Sean McCann
Open Resolve
(2010, Stunned)
RIYL = amazingness

I warned everyone earlier this year about Sean McCann. In fact, it’s only been a little over a month since I posted about Midnight Orchard. I'm back to report more. And rest assured, I will continue to do so, because if I’ve learned anything about Mr. McCann, it’s that he is the embodiment of prolificacy. And in an awesome seemingly illogical way, he is also represents the highest standards of quality. Prolificacy and quality usually don't make good bedfellows. Fortunately, McCann is a modern genius folks. Let me just pause here for a moment here to notify you that this here tape, Open Resolve, the one I'm going to write about shortly, is limited to 111 copies. If you value music you will buy it immediately. Just saying. What do I think about it? Well, as you can see above, I personally equate the music on this plastic cassette to be on equal footing with amazingness. That is, the physical state being that is amazingness. Open Resolve fits squarely into that category. This is just one of those musical documents that requires the most broad, far reaching descriptors, but then is undermined by them. I’ll try to avoid them, but I’m going to fail. Here we go: side A is separated into four songs which run the gamut from soul-devouring, free-jazz-informed ambient-drone blitzkriegs to gentle, lilting string epiphanies. It is a series of epiphanies really. We’re talking hardcore Joycean epiphanies too, not just those small tickling ones characterized by butterflies. I love McCann because he can manage to wrangle the most tonally eschewed squalor into something that can still be defined as beautiful. I was just about to say that “Scapula,” the open track on side A was the perfect example of this with its clutter of brass, strings and drums, but really, the whole tape is the perfect example. Seann McCann is the perfect example. Side B carries the gloriously expansive “Pass Away,” a near twenty minute ocean of internal cacophony that is the epitome of what I’m would like to dub “noise grandeur.” That being noise that somehow transcends that somehow transcends the atonality of its separate parts to create an overwhelmingly gorgeous state of grandeur. The piece is followed by a beautifully dissolving coda and that is that. Stunned Records, this is a request from me to you, please extend this run. Not only that, put it on vinyl. I’m willing to invest in this. Check the email on the sidebar; let me know what I need to do. How is it that the best music I’ve heard so far this year going to be relegated to a miniscule 111 tapes? Get them fast folks, this may be the only physical document of Open Resolve that you will ever have (it's almost sold out, but you can still find it through a couple distributors - google!).

-Thistle

Sean McCann on Myspace
Check out McCann's previous CDr release on Stunned Records, Sway. It's sold out and is freely downloadable here.