Yet, out of the blue in the middle of this year came word of a new solo album — via the Drums & Wires Recordings label run by her erstwhile bandmate and still-fellow Seattleite Michael Wells — in the shape of the very welcoming and much-welcomed Beckonings. A richly diverse collection that reacquaints us with Torgerson’s skills as a singer, a song-interpreter, an arranger and a collaborator, as well as her lesser-explored role as a writer.
Beckonings is the more than fashionably-late follow-up to Torgerson’s unfairly overlooked first solo album, 2004’s Saint Stranger. The belated return to record-releasing duties in general could possibly have been a bit swifter, had a few things in life and the wider world not got in the way. Moreover, there was self-evidently a determination to reappear with something very distinctively rendered, however long it took.
This led to the recruitment of a new cluster of musicians, quite divergent from the amorphous Americana set-ups of Torgerson’s former day-job operations, but subliminally connected to the shared ethos of the largely European players who grouped around her around on the free-range Saint Stranger. “I found an improv, instrumental band called Gems: Daniel Rapport, Gary Palmer, Jacob Evans and Adrian Van Batenburg”, she explains of the search results. “Two drummers and two synth players who were actually listening to each other play their good, hypnotic music. We were all at the Owl & Thistle in Seattle where Danny Godinez books bands that he enjoys or wants to further explore and he quite often joins them on stage even after only one rehearsal. I had already been working for a few years with Danny. So, after six months of musician searching, I finally thought to myself: ‘Bingo, I found them.’”
The creative chemistry was near-instant. “When Danny and I stepped into Gems’ rehearsal space for our very first rehearsal, we gelled immediately”, recalls Torgerson glowingly. “It felt like we had been playing together for years. I had so missed being in a band and was bent on fixing that. I love the collaboration and teamwork that a band can offer, especially if you like the persons involved.”
With a new line-up of accomplices in place around her, the development of what was to become Beckonings continued, albeit at a piecemeal pace, in and around the pandemic’s phase-out period and other commitments.
“We worked on twelve songs every Tuesday for seven months”, Torgerson recounts. “Sometimes we successfully dodged Covid, sometimes we didn’t, meaning that we’d lose that particular band member for up to two weeks. That led me to decide to record in a less expensive studio; I needed to cut down on the financial gamble.
“I needed all six of us to be healthy, in order to record. Covid was indeed hair raising [at] times. We needed to work quickly and have a lightning-fast engineer. We found Jim Roth at Fort Lawton! The band played live. And, I played guitar and sang live. We nailed twelve songs from June 20th-22nd, 2022, of which nine survived the very long mix period with the wonderful mix engineer, Mathew Brown at Space Ranch Studios.”After a brief sojourn to perform a live show in Greece with Godinez and the more locally-based Akis Boyatzis of Sigmatropic – a key creative foil on Saint Stranger – attention turned to the already discussed mixing duties and to enhancing the core recordings with choice guest trimmings. This included sprinkling in instrumental ingredients from three former Walkabouts comrades – Chris Eckman (guitar), Glenn Slater (piano/samples) and the aforementioned Wells (harmonica) – as well as contributions from Anne Marie Ruljancich (violin/vocals), Heidi Wischler (trumpet) and Jim Roth (vibes/pedal/vocals).
With everything finally baked together into the mastering oven by engineer Ed Brooks, the end results speak strongly as both individual set-pieces and as part of a collective statement.
Even though many extant followers might have been more than content with a stripped-down acoustic affair, after such a long visible absence, Beckonings defies expectations as a nine-part suite that rewardingly refreshes Torgerson’s sound palette, whilst providing comforting connections to her past. Crucially, there is plenty of space left for that commandingly rich voice, which many of us in the UK first discovered through a spine-tingling duet appearance on Tindersticks’ timeless “Travelling Light”. The first four chosen pieces on the album come from the pens of others. The most radiant of all being the opening adaptation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Happy”, an outtake from 1992’s lesser-loved Lucky Town LP that subsequently surfaced on the Tracks rarities boxed set. The decision to tackle the song came from an earlier request from two friends to perform it at a wedding vows renewal celebration.“I fell in love with the song even though it’s tinged with a bit of darkness, ‘man and woman circle each other in a cage, a cage that’s been handed down the line.’ It’s still a happy song and it makes me smile to sing it”, tells Torgerson of her relationship with the semi-lost Springsteen cut. Compellingly, the Beckonings incarnation transforms the rather unfinished sounding original presentation through a gloriously rousing gospel-meets-cosmic-country makeover.
Further in, there’s a wonderfully wistful late-period Walkabouts-tinged and quite literal reading of Beck’s “Please Leave A Light On When You Go”, from his quixotic Song Reader sheet music venture. This is another selection stemming from a special request commission. As Torgeson elucidates, “Wayne Horvitz, a fabulous musician and part-owner of The Royal Room in Seattle invited some of his favourite singers to choose one song each, and he provided a backing band. We did two shows. I adore the song and have sung it ever since. Michael Wells provided a perfect harmonica part.”The two other interpretations come in the form of a fresh Eckman composition, which gives the album its title, and “Land Of Plenty”, previously released by Texan singer-songwriter Terry Lee Hale. The former was written by her long-running creative partner especially for the album “in his usual style”, as Torgerson imparts affectionately. “He did not divulge exactly what the song is about. It’s simply more of his enchanting poetry that has captivated listeners for decades. ‘They don’t know we’re trained, in the art of escape.’ I like to think of both Chris and I as being escape artists. It works for me and is really fun to sing!”
For the remaining five segments of Beckonings, we get to fully experience Carla Torgerson the songwriter in multi-dimensional yet cohesive guises. The first among them is “Hang On, Hold On”, which curiously and persuasively combines sonic components of Remain In Light-era Talking Heads with Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man through its warm lateral rhythms and buoyant backing vocal tiers. Torgerson advises that the track possesses a long history, having being “written in about twenty minutes back in 2004 in Athens, Greece” for inclusion on Saint Stranger, before being abandoned until its recent revisitation for Beckonings.Thereafter comes the grander and more widescreen “Amadeo”, a subtly twanging and waltzing narrative sprawler, inspired by a historical true-life literary source. As Torgerson divulges, “The idea for the song ‘Amadeo’ came from a book called Killer Smile written by Lisa Scottoline. It dealt with her Italian family in which some members were sent to internment camps during World War Two.
“I learned that 10,000 Italians were interned and never received reparations from the US government. This same cruelty happened to 120,000 Japanese-American citizens. In 1988, President Reagan finally offered an official apology and 20,000 dollars to each Japanese-American interned. Too little, too late, in my book. I’m hoping that ‘Amadeo’ becomes a sing-along when I make it back to Europe!”
She reveals that the rather unusually threaded and assembled track “is written from personal experiences”, adding, “I think that it’s one of the most successful songs from my latest album. I asked the band to be like a Greek chorus and they supplied it! Early during the rehearsals, I happened to hear Gary Palmer sing, so I asked him to do this duet with me and he obliged. He is such a sweet man and I really had to coach him, to the idea that he’s angry in this song, which is just outside of his nature.”
For the penultimate passage of Beckonings, we’re taken through the lushly configured but lyrically dark seven-plus minutes of the sublime “Sunken Hearts”, which reminds us again of the strong European influences that seeped into post-Sub Pop Walkabouts albums, as well as making nods to Nick Drake’s Bryter Later. The song’s beatific synth-edged symphonic reach conceals a tender mournful eulogy to two tragically lost family members, as Torgerson discloses. “It took me years to write that song and it’s sadly about two cousins of mine, two brothers, who both died, in separate incidents, by drowning.”For the shorter and wistfully uplifting finale of “It’s Been A Great Show”, Torgerson reworks another piece with a past in the same theatre endeavour as the aforesaid “Black Box Witness”, which she was initially stirred to record properly in order to fill a slot in a Drums & Wires showcase compilation and to accompany a short film sequence by her friend Donnie Rockwell. Positioned at the end of the beguiling Beckonings, the pared-back arrangement, largely consisting of acoustic guitar, piano and a clarinet sample, allows Torgerson to philosophically soothe us out through the exit of one of her most radiant studio sets to date.
Whilst the final birth of Beckonings has been indeed as challenging as its epic gestation, with Torgerson breaking an elbow just before her nonagenarian parents were both temporarily hospitalised, at the point an album release gathering was being coordinated, she remains remarkably redoubtable. “We all survived and are back home. I just got the metal removed from my arm and I am happily playing guitar again”, she says stoically. “I plan to have a CD release party in January 2025, because who doesn’t like a good party?” Despite the travails of her recent times, plans are already brewing for another hopefully quicker-to-appear solo long-player, featuring further input from the core musicians found on Beckonings. “As far as future work is concerned, I hope to re-work three more originals that I wrote with the wonderful Rob Taube of NYC. I also have two more covers that I really love. I am now more acquainted with my fellow bandmates and grasp their innumerable strengths.”Torgerson also wishes to make some return visits to parts of the world that took The Walkabouts and Chris & Carla closer to their hearts than many American stopping-off places. “I miss playing in Europe and I miss seeing my many, many friends over there, so we’ll see what can be done about that. I dream of the travelling days and look forward to setting foot and guitar back in Europe.” This writer at the very least, will be waiting for all this to happen.
-Adrian-
