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Reviews: Michael Dyer ~ Our Unwinding Time
Posted on Saturday, August 04, 2007 @ 01:23:25 PDT
Topic: Reviews
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Artist: Michael Dyer
CD: Our Unwinding Time
Home: Los Angeles, California
Style: Folk/Rock
Quote: "Dyer’s music makes you listen, meditate, and wonder."
By Dan MacIntosh
When folk musician (at the time) Roger McGuinn first heard The Beatles, he immediately set about combining his folk instincts with a new enthusiasm for British Invasion rock. This resulted in what is now known as folk/rock. When I listen to Our Unwinding Time by Michael Dyer, it suggests what McGuinn might have sounded like had he retreated further back into folk. Dyer’s songs are consistently colored by jangling electric guitar, but his vocals and lyrics are much closer to traditional folk.
This CD’s title track includes some striking lyrics:
When my love starts enhancing
Your love starts out bleeding
When my love is repeating
Your love is deleting ...
You get the distinct impression that Dyer is not only on a different page from his lover, but he’s also in an entirely different book. His memory tells him one story, but her recollections say something that is completely out of his context.
Dyer is an expert lyricist, and many of these words would read just as well in a poetry book. “Coasting, The Crying Birds” is an excellent example of this disc’s lyrical high quality. It says, in part:
Coasting
The crying birds
And lately
their wings are betraying
The winds that blow
The sunset’s delaying ...
It is as though all of nature is warning Dyer that all is not well. The track concludes with this sad statement: “And you closed the door, oh, you closed the door.”
As these above examples indicate, many of Dyer’s songs lean toward the sad end of the emotional spectrum. One exception to this approach is the pun-y “Floor Play." Perhaps it includes a nod to Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” when Dyer mentions “my big brass bed" early on in the song. It’s apparently also about s.e.x, especially due to the line “floor playin’ ‘til we’re breathless and red.” But when Dyer sings later, “My dog love floor play, my cat do too” these lines put that strictly romantic theory in doubt.
Unlike lesser singer/songwriters, Dyer’s musicianship is just as integral as words and singing are to his art. The driving “Not Much Of A Dancer” includes intersecting guitar picking and strumming, which creates a strangely beautiful mood. At his most mystical, this playing reminds me of John McLaughlin’s work in Mahavishnu Orchestra. But McLaughlin is more of a jazz artist than a rocker. Nevertheless, McGuinn has admitted that jazz saxophonist John Coltrane was a big influence on The Byrds’ genre-breaking “Eight Miles High," so this jazz connection is not quite so farfetched when you stop to think about it.
Dyer is a fine singer, although he lets his voice take a backseat to the words and instrumentation of his songs. I’m not quite sure who he sounds like. Gordon Lightfoot comes to mind, but Lightfoot is Perry Como-relaxed much of the time; Dyer is far more urgent than Mr. Sundown.
Our Unwinding Time is the sort of CD that reveals different layers of meaning with each play. This is not easy-to-digest pop music. Instead, Dyer creates highly emotional food for thought, which requires repeated rumination. So if you don’t get it the first time around, don’t get discouraged. Dyer’s music makes you listen, meditate, and wonder.
Artist Website: http://www.michaeldyermusic.com
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