hair machine - Alternative - Bozeman, MT
by Jordan Finn
Wherever Phillip Griffin has lived, I’ve always remembered his copy of Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” hanging on his wall. If you don’t know it, I suggest you give it a look. It’s a recognizable depiction of an artist in their element, an aged and blind guitar player contorted over his instrument, the darkness of their sight brightened into the visibility of deep and calming blues suffusing the whole painting. The guitarist cannot see but because we can we experience their playing as color, sound given shape in a monochromatic moody blue. An expressionistic work like this is defined by the emotion of a subject rather than the beauty of form or the perception of the observer. Expressionistic works can be unsightly, ugly even.
And of all of Phil’s musical incarnations - jazz bassist, punk weirdo, blues guitarist, or sludgy frontman - it’s this most recent iteration that foregrounds his emotional side, taking him back to his roots with acoustic guitar and singing not from the gut or the throat but the heart.
hair machine is his most recent project and it’s an emotionally-raw and sometimes painfully sincere side of the musician. Yet as heavy as the feels get it never comes off as glib or preachy. It sounds like what it really is - a record of a guy who understands that spilling your emotions out into the microphone isn’t just a hackneyed cliche of sad-boi folk but a life-raft to survive the storm.
His EP please pardon my crying…i’m learning to save my life! is hair machine’s first release. Like the personable records of the best singer-songwriters, the material treads the line between a thinly veiled roman à clef and creative fiction colored by personal experience. Lyrically, we get arcs and stories but it’s the images and word play that stand out most. Lines like “This and that about theys and thems / brother I’m running off of crumbs and stems” or “We snuck out our folks’ windows and into the dark / a blanket on a patch of field,'' keep echoing in my head like either a lover’s goodbye or a throbbing hangover. pardon my crying isn’t lachrymose posturing but a heartfelt acknowledgement that artistic candor can be life-saving (or at least make life worth living).
From the starting gate we are treated to perhaps the album’s strongest track, “big sky blues,” a rollicking number that sets the stage for the rest of the EP. Griffin nails the country-folk mood-setting with his expressive playing but it’s the wordplay that keeps me coming back. Something of a narrative, “big sky blues” begins in a beer-soaked mattress before stumbling back to the bar and into the throes of alcohol abuse. It could be the spiritual sequel to Neil Young’s “Roll Another Number (For the Road),” where Young narrates a maudlin drunk’s drive home in the dawn light. Griffin carries on the story to the next morning: a blurry-eyed drunk propelled from their bedroom to the bar and into the boozy fumes of regret and unachievable longing. Between the speaker’s wanderlust, barfly sympathies, and backward glances you get the portrait of a figure who knows things can’t go on the way they’ve been and it’s largely this character we follow throughout the album.
“baby, hold steady” slows the tempo to what could either be a head-hanging shuffle or a romantic but drifting waltz depending on whether you hear the song staged by a wistful loner or two lovers at odds. “carry on” picks up the mood once more before “all or nothing” really slows things down. “all or nothing” is a true gem, with it’s snail’s pace of a crawl forcing you to slow down to taste the words, the references, the story. It’s one of the most painful but also hopeful tracks. You can nearly hear yourself thinking out loud with all of the space Griffin leaves between notes and phrases, and at one point, I swear you can hear him quietly laugh at the memory a certain lyric brings to mind. “smoke & blades” has the potential to be a full-on rock song with it’s mid-tempo groove and space for instrumentation. The content of the song handles the same difficult topics but with a lighter delivery that prepares the listener for the EP’s end.
The final track, “kitchen blues,” is either a ranting cook or the inner-monologue of someone washing dishes at home…after ranting about dishes at their job. Work and home are made identical in lines like, “I go to work and I do the laundry / I come home and I do the laundry” or “I go to work and I sweep the floor / I go to work and I sweep the floor.” The expanding responsibilities of the gig worker and the increased workload of the minimum wage job makes our private lives less an escape from drudgery but a continuation of it. Serving the well-off and helping the status quo aggrandize while the working class can barely meet their own needs is all too familiar.
It’s a pessimistic note to end on but a necessary pessimism. Griffin’s critical eye is familiar, knowing his critiques of capitalism in bands like Bull Market. The record starts with an alcoholic running out of time and by ending the EP with “kitchen blues,” we see the growth in a sobered up worker still unsatisfied but clear-headed enough to articulate what it is that’s wrong for the drifters and headstrong alike. Be it personal or political, economic or environmental: “we can all see something’s got to change.”
Of course, hair machine never leans into preachy polemics. The songs are great and the feelings genuine. Griffin isn’t asking much of anyone while he turns over another memory and sees what’s underneath - only that you pardon his tears before another pass of the pipe.
please pardon my crying…i’m learning to save my life! is a stronger record for how bare bones it is. Even snippets of dialogue between Phil and the studio engineer are left on the record. It’s rawness is the point. Like “The Old Guitarist,” the feeling takes over the song. Mood is the focal point rather than a riff, an idea, or a rhythm. Whatever memories or stories that are part of the performance are ancillary to the feelings so successfully conveyed here because we’re pardoning hair machine’s sincerity in an age of irony - a life-saving sincerity. By letting in the emotional, we start to understand what it takes to heal and the catharsis of tears become a symbol for an honest to God reconciliation with the self.
hair machine’s soundscapes are moods and tones you can’t help but be colored by and Griffin’s EP is an exciting start to what I hope is a full-fledged project. And who knows, it might even bring out whatever kind of blues you might be feeling inside yourself. Pardon the puns.
hair machine will be performing in the Bozeman, MT area this weekend alongside goosetooth! Come grab a drink or a bite and catch some tunes.
Friday, 2/18/22, @acre.kitchen , 5-8pm , Big Sky
Saturday, 2/19/22, @izakayathreefish , 8-11pm , Downtown Bozeman
Follow hair machine on substack!