The greatest fear of any artist who has a tender relationship
with volume is being talked over. All hopes of bedroom intimacy are
mercilessly stripped away in a live setting, where the noises from the
bar, and the ubiquitous loudmouth drunk, can smother a quiet
performer’s best intentions. It would then seem that Laura
Gibson—whose homespun folk music is woven with the softest
delicacy—might be the ideal victim of losing songs to a talkative
audience, yet no matter how difficult the setting, it’s seldom the
case. This is because Gibson’s wholesome folk music is as trusting as a
pie left to cool on an open windowsill, and to take advantage of such
faith would be a karmic disaster of epic proportions. Besides, Gibson
has experience performing in difficult settings.
“When I moved to Portland, I had this idea of playing for people who
are sick or dying,” Gibson explains. “I met a woman who worked at Our
House of Portland [a residential care facility for those with advanced
HIV/AIDS], I went to visit, and it’s such a special community of
people. I did that for two years and a lot of times I was just sitting
on the smoking porch with a couple people and playing songs. Sometimes
if no one really wanted to hear me sing, I’d wash dishes.”
Gibson’s saintly outreach (she did the dishes!) isn’t normally press
fodder—in fact, when asked about it, her response was
reserved—it’s just her idea of what musicians are supposed to do.
As she explains, “I just didn’t have intentions of playing shows in
clubs. I thought this would be informal music therapy.”
The product of a rural upbringing in the timber town of Coquille,
Oregon, Gibson couldn’t have been more of an outsider to popular music.
Every musician has an individual path they travel down in order to
reach their destination on the stage—whether it be a cooler older
sibling, high school band, discovering the Clash at a young
age—but Gibson’s path seems entirely accidental. Shortly
following her musical therapy sessions on the Our House smoking porch,
she was swallowed whole by a community of local musicians—the
majority of whom are in the Hush Records rotation—who took her in
and never really let her go. Her latest recording for Hush, the stark
and beautiful Beasts of Seasons, is the work of Gibson and a
staggering lineup of 16 local musicians (members range from Menomena to
Norfolk & Western) who guide her, but never interfere with her
distinct vision for the album.
Beasts is split between “Communion Songs,” and “Funeral
Songs,” two distinct sections of music meant to be listened to as a
whole. “I really love records that start in a certain place, but you
feel like you end up in another place by the end of the record. I
wanted it to have that feel.”
Loyal to its title, “Communion Songs” is softly spiritual, with
songs that, as Gibson best explains it, “reach out to connect with
something other than yourself.” The latter half, “Funeral Songs,” isn’t
compiled of head-hanging dirges, but instead deals with the frail
nature of life and the certainty of our final act. Either would
function properly as its own work, but together they masterfully come
together, making Beasts an arduous listen that rewards those who
hang on every mellifluous word she sings. To delve this deep into
someone’s music is an act of trust, but with Gibson, it’s a risk worth
taking.