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Orisis (2022 reissue)

by Briars of North America

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Sunnytown 04:04
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Annalee 03:20
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Orisis 02:07
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Liza Jane 03:27
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Oh Believers 05:33
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about

SOME WRITING FROM JEREMY THAL — FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Orisis was our first album, and as I listen to it now, it feels like it belongs to another time, a time we didn’t yet have smartphones, when I would walk down Cortelyou road to hand with Gideon and his girlfriend at the time, when we’d work on songs in this tiny room in that apartment. One day when Gideon emailed a recording – probably recorded on an first-generation Zoom recorder and loaded into iTunes – it came up on my iTunes as being by the band “Briars of North America,” and I liked the name, and it seemed pretty legit to just appear like that. This was in the era of ‘Brooklyn Pastoral’ when I was listening to a lot of Phosphorescent and Beirut, talking about permaculture and learning how to flatpick old timey tunes.

After about 4 years living in Brooklyn, Gideon and I decided to move up to Hudson. This was before Hudson is what it is now, before the endless stream of NYTimes articles discovered the place and it became synonymous with the post-hipster exodus from Williamsburg. It was fun. Our friends made cheese, converted cars to run on grease, and started a woodfire pizza truck. Gideon and I coached a youth radio show on WGXC (we even produced the theme song, which played incessantly for several years). Most of Orisis was recorded in our tiny apartment in the attic of an old house on Washington street. Rob Caldwell, who owned Musica on Columbia St, also let us record in the music shop’s basement, where it was bone-chillingly cold but decently sound-insulated. We recorded the whole album on a two-channel mBox and a couple of cheap mics, with help from our friends: Otto Hauser on drums, Greg Chudzik on bass, and Simon Jermyn on vocals, and a cameo by Elana Carroll on the vocals of "Sunnytown."

The album caught the attention of friend and neighbor Meshell Ndegeocello, whom we had played with at the concert for the opening of WGXC. At the time, she helped us try to define what the album was, and came up with an unexpected: “Devotional.” Sure, we were bearded Jewish boys who sang about Jesus, but that was just because we were covering shapenote tunes, a la Sam Amidon (the brother of early Briars collaborator, Stefan Amidon). But after a while we realized Meshell was right, we were making, and still are making, non-religious devotional music for those who have lost faith in the conventional gods. At the time, I wrote this in email interview with Katy Henrikson who was writing for for Rumpus magazine:

The album reflects a desire to return to a life of simplicity, a sort of reinvention of the rural, the small town, a way to reorganize human relations outside the context of apocalyptic capitalism… As Meshell says, “Simplicity is the new wealth.”

…I play music because it draws together all the disintegrating strands of life into something palatable, comprehensible, moving—it conjures the spirit behind all or disparate suffering and joy and holds it for a second, a kind of unique singularity in an expanding cosmos… Music exists in a ceremonial space, where certain kinds of emotionally crystallized structures become malleable.

Reading this now it feels like the dude who wrote it is from a different universe, a place I loved but can’t quite return to. Back then we used to write songs about the apocalypse with a kind of backwards nostalgia for it. Now that we are living it, I am nostalgic for the days of affordable rents and janky shows at the Spotted Dog, when everyone was talking about starting a farm, and we had a lot of spontaneous dance parties.

Things fall apart, friendships shift, and what used to be a kind of playful irony has become endemic hopelessness. And yet, when I listen back to Orisis, I realize I still believe what we believed then, that there’s a way to tap into music that brings us back to our most essential selves. I can still close my eyes and see the old Vermonter couple who inspired the song “What makes it so,” – tell us about the shimmering energy in the stillness of the winter woods.


ORISIS LYRICS

When will these joys of life be no longer?
I cry, I tear, and I moan
When will I ascend into thy white snow?
Rivers run, crashing tides, child of grace…

Oh despairers, here is my neck,
By god, you shall not go down
Hang your whole weight upon me
Corpses rise, gashes heal, grass of graves….

SOME WRITING FROM THE BAND — OCTOBER 2011

Two birds, splendid in flight, hit a glass window. Trees, hills, sky, apples, snow, heartache for one. Suburban houses, Maoists, lilies, driveways, french fries, heartbreak for the other. Their bodies are picked up off the ground by the spirit. It holds their warm broken bodies and nurses them back to health, in a box that floats strung along by butterflies high above this world, showing them things they'd long forgot. They travel for ages, or for instants, and remember the most important thing the spirit told them. They can't tell you what this is, but they sing it.

credits

released June 21, 2022

This is a reissue of the October 2011 debut from Briars of North America.

The Briars of North America are:
Gideon Crevoshay - Vocals, Keys, Mandolin
Jeremy Thal - Vocals, Horns, Acoustic Guitar, Synthesizers
Greg Chudzik - Acoustic and Electric Bass
Simon Jermyn - Electric Guitar, Baritone Guitar
Otto Hauser - Drums

Additional vocals by: Elana Belle Carroll (Sunnytown)

Additional sounds by: Cara Turett, Sara Kendall, Micah Maidenberg, Vanessa Smith, Lucas Jain, Felipe Damario

All music and lyrics composed by Gideon Crevoshay and Jeremy Thal, except Night Thought (Jeremiah Ingalls) and Orisis (some words borrowed from Mr. Walt Whitman). Copyright 2011.

Recorded by Gideon Crevoshay and Jeremy Thal at Lost Cousin Studios in Hudson NY. Produced by Gideon and Jeremy with the help of Felipe Damario (who also plays drums on Sunnytown), Ezra Tenenbaum, and the inimitable beat-alchemists The Poison Brothers: Christopher Marianetti and Cameron Steele. Sunnytown mixed by John Guth with special thanks to Michael Levine.

In addition we'd like to thank everyone who gave us advice, feedback, and hugs along the way, especially Me'shell, Zara and Stefan, Naomi Morse, Kate Reeder, Schiller, Poison Brothers McGee & C-Salt, Pesach and Yoni Stadlin, the Ancram House and its lovely people, Jason Kass, Heather McInstosh, Shannekia McIntosh, Sam Merrett, Marcia Garcia, Annika Jermyn, Kylie Emers, Lawrence Caplan, Bob and Deborah, Erynn Sosinski, Sister Edmund, Joachim Badenhorst, Lewis Hyde, Meredith Monk, Rosie, Peter Sciscioli, Madeleine Asher, Joe Bergen, Matt Johnson, Ryan Murdock, Adam Miller, Naureen, Becky, Andrew 'Dizzy' Gillespie, Jeff Ratner, Little Bros Michael and Zachary and Big and Little Sis Eve and Laila, moms and pops, grams and gramps, niece Aria, little ones on their ways, Captain Nick, Nic Halverson, Ed and his drunk monkey song, Galit Seifan, Walt Whitman, John Lindaman, Derek Nievergelt, David Schneider, Kevin Hogan, Kevin Barker, the wavy kids at Horizons, Crossroads, and Rikers, Nathan Koci, Aaron Siegel, Ted Herne, Rob of Musica (thanks for letting us use your basement), Cara Turett for artistic design, and a bunch of other great people who inspired these songs. And a special appreciation to grandma carol, her inspiration, and her love.

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about

Briars of North America New York

We work at our own pace, with release plans guided more by equinoxes and solstices than any conventional wisdom. We are two long lost cousins Jeremy Thal and Gideon Crevoshay and a friend, Greg Chudzik. Our music exists at the crossroads of ambient, indie and so-called new music—delivered with the precision of chamber music, the emotional transparency of folk, and the weight of ritual. ... more

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