33 rebellions per minute
"the rhythm of your soul, lodged in your brain like these pieces"
2000
Rory Merritt Stitt, THE NARCISSIST
Rory Merritt Stitt can, when he so chooses, play (and compose for) the piano with exactly the manner and skill level of Tori Amos. I'm sure it's not the only thing he'd want to be known for, but he _did_ put "Magic Light", his clear demonstration of the fact, first on his debut, so he presumably thought it was a good way to capture our attention. Captured mine. His left hand pounds out a thunderous bassline (BOYS FOR PELE, obviously); his right hand connects improbable dots in her intimidating Rachmaninoff -derived style, and the chorus flows with exactly the reassuring near-pop-standard grace of, say, "Crucify". His voice is elegant and tenor and direct where hers is breathy and female and mannered, but he does employ a distorted vocal sample of himself to give it the moderne touch of CHOIRGIRL HOTEL. He could build an album, a career, on such homage. There would be no disgrace to that. No one learns to play like that without a couple of decades of disgustingly regular long practices, and Tori is distancing herself, rapidly as possible, from her early superhero role as Piano Girl. The hole waits to be plugged.
His second song, though, is "Crazy Horse", and on the chorus his piano and voice suddenly suggest Seth Timbs of Fluid Ounces doing a cover of DRUMS AND WIRES-era XTC: a rapid vocal near-chant misaligned with the rigid but unbalanced piano line in a way that straddes "arty" and "goofy". So here, perhaps Rory could be Piano Chameleon instead: do his next song with the blocky grace of Beth Sorrentino (Suddenly Tammy), the next with the studied reserve of Alison Faith Levy, the next with the complicated broken jazz chordings of Bruce Hornsby, and still not worry about anything else. However: the _rest_ of "Crazy...", the non-goofy part, is more like Rasputina: thudding piano and low bloopy synthesizer jumping nervously around sharply bowed strings. Rory is not just writing these parts but playing them; and we recognize him, bless his soul, as an all-time overachiever.
"Look Up" introduces his talent for wildly syncopated industrial drum loops. High Tori piano notes delicately drive the chorus, but the verses thrive on glassy synthesizer, and sighing vocals that ignore the percussion with weary hauteur. "Broken Mind" races by delightfully like the Cure's "a Man Inside My Mouth", on urgent rapid-fire vocals, pump organ, beepy Depeche Mode synth, triple-speed Rachmaninoff, and a drum-machine in the role of mechanical rabbit. "Lullaby" is on harpsichord (PELE again?) and whistly synth. It introduces another Stitt trademark: weird autoharmonies, here a slow voice savoring the syllables like Mecca Normal's Jean Smith, and a higher voice, almost primping, like a cross between Jeff Buckley and Bryan Ferry. "Face", meanwhile, adds Veda Hille to his list of pianist impressions: low, rumbly, dark, mathematical. The vocal melody soars at several places near Mariah Carey, and elsewhere towards the ambitious but mainstream white-girl balladry of Carole King; whenever it does so, it backs away hastily and changes key, embarrassed.
"Interstellar Music"'s keyboards are buzzy and circling, something like Stevie Wonder's commercial prime and something like dance club, but the melody is as cheerily rococo as "the Logical Song", and his autoharmonies here could pass for male/female duet. "Captain", retreating, could almost be the pianist's 12th practice exercise in Haunting Dissonance For Dummies, but thing is, the For Dummies series tends to be strikingly well-taught, and Stitt does add a few decorations. "Reverie" is similar for 20 seconds but then reminds me of Fluid Ounces again, and it finally occurs to me that I'm saying "Fluid Ounces" instead of "Ben Folds" not just because I'm an obscuritanist asshole, but because Timbs's style really does allow a shade more darkness than Folds' used to, and will occasionally let the melody circle intricately where Folds would've insisted on dragging it across three octaves and four jazz chord extentions. And "Even In You", the closer, somehow connects Debussy (beautiful, exotic, and forever unresolved) to the Broadway simplicity that finds a few chords to repeat up the scale until the audience picks out where is the cue to start applauding.
Which means, of course, that the role of making old-fashioned Tori Amos albums remains unfilled. Maybe someday, when he's established, Rory will treat us to one: it would be a lovely gift, and I'm not convinced anyone else has practiced enough to make one. But it would be terribly hard to put that much personal effort into music, and not want to reshape it, to leave audible footprints. Lucky thing he's got a talent for that, too.
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