Dylan Carlson and Adrienne Davies of Earth at the Raccoon Motel -- November 14.
In 1849, following the end of the first Mexican-American war, the Mexican government entered into an ill-advised arrangement with John Joseph Glanton, a former Texas Ranger of violent reputation. Glanton was tasked with ridding the northern part of the territory (including areas freshly ceded to the United States) of native Apaches, themselves of violent reputation. Things got out of hand, as the Glanton gang saw fit to kill and scalp as many natives as possible, motivated by financial incentive and likely by the scalping and murder of Glanton's wife by Apaches some years prior. Within months, their employers had turned against them, with the rogue bounty hunters now under their own bounty, and the Glanton gang ultimately met a bloody end in what is now Arizona.
Their saga captured the imagination of the late Cormac McCarthy, who fictionalized their deeds in his 1985 novel Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West. The Vietnam War correspondent Michael Herr praised Blood Meridian as “a classic American novel of regeneration through violence,” but nothing is really “regenerated” in its ghastly tableau. The novel, however, played a key role in a true regeneration – as the thematic inspiration behind Hex, the rebirth of the ever-shifting band known as Earth.
Dylan Carlson has been the sole constant in Earth since 1989. His tragic friendship with Nirvana's Kurt Cobain is here mentioned only as a historical footnote. His true legacy is the introduction of drone into heavy music, using heavily downtuned and distorted electric guitars to harness feedback and low frequencies, creating extended monolithic soundscapes that combined the minimalism of LaMonte Young or Indian raga with heavy metal sonics.
After releasing several commercially unsuccessful yet surprisingly influential albums, Carlson was laid low by heroin and trouble with the law. In 2005, however, he re-emerged as Earth, with an almost unrecognizable sound: slow and stately, stripped-down, with the overwhelming feedback and sub-bass replaced by the instantly recognizable twang of a Fender Telecaster and the impossibly precise and graceful drumming of Adrienne Davies, who has been the other mainstay of Earth ever since.
Together they created Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method, a haunting instrumental masterwork directly inspired by Blood Meridian. Each of its nine wordless songs bears a title either inspired by or taken directly from a line in McCarthy's novel. Songs such as “Land of Some Other Order” and “Tethered to the Polestar” manage to convey the sense of dread and wonder one feels while reading the book, and even its coal-black humor (“An Inquest Concerning Teeth”). Carlson cited Neil Young, Duane Eddy, and Merle Haggard as influences, and especially the spaghetti-Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.
As he told J. Bennett of Vice in 2014: “It’s kinda funny because there’s that Jack Bruce song 'Theme for an Imaginary Western,' and that was kind of the genesis of [Hex] … . Blood Meridian … will probably never be a movie. But I thought if it ever was a movie, I wanted to do the soundtrack. So that was Hex – my theme for an imaginary Western.”
Blood Meridian is about evil, among other things, especially the “immense and blood-soaked waste” of the Southwest and the demon seed of manifest destiny. Carlson discussed this with Terrorizer magazine in 2005: “As someone born in America, I definitely consider myself a product of the frontier and the history of it has influenced me … . 'Indians,' the white man, they were all forced to deal with this place, an environment that was harsh and demanding and it forced people to react to it in a certain way. Like the 'hex' sign itself – the Mennonites are normally super-God-fearing people, but when they came to America they had to invent these signs to keep evil spirits away. There's this need to protect themselves from this entity that inhabits the landscape … everything was violent and hard, everyone was violent.”
Violence and bloodshed are the American legacy, and the sea of blood on which this nation floats is now rising to swallow everything in its path. It is fitting that an album created as a sonic approximation of a novel dealing with these themes is now being performed in its entirety across the United States.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hex, Earth completed a tour in April plotted around the path traveled by Blood Meridian's nameless protagonist, beginning in St. Louis, ending in Texas, and even venturing into Chihuahua City, Mexico. We are blessed to witness the concluding date of their fall run at the Raccoon Motel (315 East Second Street, Davenport IA) on Friday, November 14, in the company of Stebmo (longtime Earth collaborator Steve Moore). Doors are at 7, p.m., the show is at 8 p.m.
Hex is an evocative work of stark and foreboding beauty, well worth celebrating as both the triumphant resurgence of Earth and their transformation into one of the most remarkable artists of our time. For all its darkness, to bear live witness to its performance is a rare and sublime pleasure indeed.
For more information on Earth's Raccoon Motel concert on November 14, visit TheRaccoonMotel.com.
