Audio Vérité
The endless appeal of the singer-songwriter is the stripped-down simplicity of the set-up: these truthseekers divining the universal via voice over acoustic guitar. The supposed vérité of the set-up means that the more stripped-down things are, the more unadorned and direct the recording, the more truthful, the more personal, these works seem.
Pennsylvania-born, New York-based songstress Diane Cluck took this lack-of-artifice to its ultimate truth; stripping away rock myths to the point of her own myth-making. Cluck recorded herself at home —her raw, powerful voice resounding out over guitar, harmonium, or piano, but still half-smothered under room-tone and tape-hiss— and, in one memorable moment, stops to answer the phone mid-recording.
Cluck self-released her early records, hand-crafting covers and taking them around to New York record-store's, leaving them on consignment. When she submitted to her first ever 'proper' release, of her fourth record, Oh Vanille/Ova Nil, she kept it limited to 500 copies, and drew and glued the covers together, writing the track-list and credits by hand. Such uneasiness with commerce only seems to add more profundity to Cluck's music; makes her searing truths seem even more truthful.
In California
Diane Cluck cut her teeth coming up in New York's anti-folk scene; a punk-ish cadre of people-with-guitars who refused the tasteful trappings of the coffeehouse set. Born at a Sidewalk Café open-mic night that rewarded outsized personalities, Cluck seemed an unlikely heroine of a scene defined by the sloppiness of the Moldy Peaches, the narrative/meta comedy of Jeffrey Lewis, and the wackiness of most of their underlings.
Yet she shone, on stage and on record, via the clarity of her voice, the dexterity of her fingers, and the near-literary brilliance of her lyrical poetry. By the time she arrived at Oh Vanille/Ova Nil, Cluck was at the peak of her powers. Having spent a summer stint in residence at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California, Cluck spent days and nights sharpening the emotional-scalpel of her songwriter's pen; her words and lyrics all precision incisions, cutting to the core.
The tune that speaks most of the Southern Californian desert, "The Turnaround Road," might be Cluck's masterwork. From its opening couplet —"cars' three-point turns/make pentagrams in the dirt"— the tune abounds with evocative imagery; a "red rock garden," "rattlers in this roundabout," and "red ants" moving "their sick and withered comrades." Written whilst on retreat, far from home, it has the feeling of a transitive moment; Cluck "gathering [her] strength like a consumptive in the sun" athrill with the sense that "something is changing."
Throughout the album, the suggestive environmental images are many; like "look at the wild deer/tumbling out from the wood" or "I see the desert beauty/the cactus flower blooming from the bleaching of the bones" or, simply, "sunbeams wade through shades of lonely." Couple with Cluck's coming-in-waves voice —caterwauling in "Hold Together (Let Go If You Will)," layered in cascading harmony through "Easy to Be Around"— and, as listener, you feel swamped in emotion; swept away by a thousand thrills and aches, drowning in a sea of joys and sadnesses.
The Greatest Singer-Songwriter of the 2000s
Cluck followed Oh Vanille/Ova Nil with another LP, 2005's Countless Times, as well as a collection of sketchy demo recordings in 2006's Monarcana. Yet, thereafter, her career reticence seemed to kick in: she abandoned New York for rural Georgia, seemingly stopped recording, and only popped her head up for occasional shows; either back in New York, or off in England, where a whole new generation of acoustic singer-songwriter types (like Emmy the Great, Laura Marling, and Blue Roses) viewed Cluck as some sort of goddess.
This cult following speaks of Cluck as cult artist; and, given her strange scattering of self-made records and hesitant relationship with anything approximating the music 'industry,' it'd be hard to image Cluck ever becoming anything but a cult artist. Yet, critically speaking, there's no reason why Cluck's cult-ish figure should lead to tempered praise.
So, let's state it simply: forget Conor Oberst, Bruce Springsteen, or any other Rolling Stone-endorsed dude playing stadiums; the greatest singer-songwriter of the 2000s was Diane Cluck. And Oh Vanille/Ova Nil is her masterwork; an album of wonder, genius, purity of purpose, and undeniable artistic truth.
Record Label: Important
Release Date: 2003
