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Imagine a small lounge in the basement of a restaurant in Portland, Oregon on a weeknight evening. Inside are a half-dozen patrons, a bartender, a cook and a man with a guitar and a microphone. The place was the Rabbit Hole (don't go looking for it, it's not there anymore), the evening was Tuesday, 6-8pm and for over a year, every single week one of the patrons was me. The man with the guitar? Billy Kennedy.
At this very moment, I am listening to an album called Panacea by Billy Kennedy. It's easy to like (and inevitably, to love), but it's difficult to describe why. Ask anyone who knows him and they will surely describe his brilliance, and surely they would all give a different description. (You may also find out about his decades-long influence on the Portland music scene, his wit and his kindness.) Personally, I think it comes down to his mastery of the sublime groove.
I'm not just making something up to sound cosmic or abstract. Listen to him, and you will hear the sublime groove, or at least, that's what I call it. The first time I listened to Panacea, I didn't notice there wasn't a band. I eventually realized that the whole record is Billy singing, with a guitar or two, maybe a bass and a snare on one song, but it didn't even occur to me the first time I heard it. That's part of his sublime groove: a record that's objectively about as sparse as it gets, but you don't even notice.
The sublime groove propulses the utterly gentle opener, "I'm Going Home" with an energy that would seem totally at odds with its delicacy and tempo, if you noticed. Then it gets weary and dark for a bridge, then twists back up, then evaporates into nothing, Seamlessly, of course, in a way that you feel a little sad, then realize it's because the song changed its mood without you noticing.
Th sublime groove is a way of being everything at once, and perhaps a way of healing all at once. It makes you hear a rhythm section when there isn't one there, but the beat and tempo jump and slide as appropriate. It's how you slip enthralling guitar runs into a nakedly sparse song without getting noticed. It's stethoscope music that turns a whisper into a shout, and it's underwater music that cackles devilishly without shattering it's placid surface. The moments move by pausing and it's hard to decide if there are more notes than you expected or fewer. The singing is both urgent and distant, like a shaman possessed by spirits who knew better than to believe in spirits. The lyrics are as specific as they are expansive, and as inscrutable as they are straightforward. They match the music with uncanny exactness (the line "how was I to know?" in "What is Up?").
This review is, thus far, ridiculously usless. Having expressed my take on this record by pairing each attribute with its exact opposite, I haven't actually said anything useful. The one marginally useful thing I can say is that none of these contradictions ever seems like a contradiction, which is the sublime groove. It's the yin and yang and the Mr. Miagi's "balance Daniel-san."
Having wasted several paragraphs, I'll try to provide some helpful information. Panacea is mostly Billy singing and playing one or a couple guitars, sometimes some bass. In this respect it's much like seeing him play solo, which is (pure Billy!) perhaps the best way to see him, although he creates considerable, albeit different, ecstacy with a full band. The 8 of 10 songs are his, which is my personal preference, and they are all excellently written. (His knack for both exposing the surprising brilliance of the unlikely songs he covered and wholly appopriating them for himself is another story altogether.) The recording is clear and well-balanced, and thankfully not polished, with amplifier hum that brings intimacy but never distraction. His songs pull from various popular musical traditions of the 20th century like blues, folk, rock, jazz and on, although the forms mingle and the complicated chord progressions sound natural while the simple ones sound new.
Of the various recordings I have of Billy (I have some, but no where near enough), this may be my favorite. Every recording or show has it's stand-outs, but Panacea is excellent throughout and works very well as a piece. Compendium is a cornucopia of great tracks, but isn't as much whole piece as Panacea. Live recordings I have don't sound as good and have too many great covers and not enough brilliant originals. As such, I would recommend Panacea as an excellent introduction to Billy Kennedy. The perfect breakfast album, especially for places that serve breakfast all day.
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Recording of Billy at the Coppe House (next door to Besaw's) in June, 1989.
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