Psalters – Prayers to Be

Description

Prayers to Be is the debut album by the American alternative folk-rock combo Psalters, released on Burnt Toast Vinyl in 1998. The January 1999 Phantom Tollbooth Pick of the Month.

From the initial disturbing roar and subsequent drop into nervous pseudo-ethnic acoustic strumming and Eastern-accented female vocals, you know you’re in for a strange musical adventure with Prayers to Be. Taking their name from that given to the temple musicians who once performed the Psalms, the psalters are intent on sharing their vision of “new songs” with fellow believers.

It’s a common thing for people in college to pick up the “shake the Western tradition off” mentality. Psalter leader Scott Krueger has taken this tendency and run with it, linking the spiritual oppression of the dominant culture with outward popular musical forms. And so he goes far, far out of his way to avoid any sort of comfortable or familiar Western music on Prayers to Be. In fact, only «Fattened Frothing Swine» has a readily identifiable chorus.

The rest of the album has an unfinished feel to it, striving mostly for the sound of turban-headed toothless street musicians at the end of the day, and veiled mothers humming mournful melodies to their children in dark dirt rooms. The music of life in that culture, in all its pain and struggle. Thirteen musicians and singers (not all at once) mix it up with everything from acoustic guitars to cello to bouzouki to djembe to tumba conga, and as many other instruments. And yet, one can still recognize extreme indy rock sensibilities thru it all, inescapable Western vibes faint but sure.

Such familiar echoes will not be enough to appeal to most people, though. Most of the music here irritates my ears quite a bit, in fact, although I love the whole idea – the homemade creative packaging, the meaty material of the lyrics, and the desire for a poetically purer spiritual sound than is possible through conventional music. I’m just not sure this is quite the unconventional music that does it for me.

That’s not to say there aren’t some extremely enjoyable moments. «I’m Free» borrows from primitive black spirituals, with a sole drum accompanying spare gospel singing. It’s beautiful. As are many of the exotic female vocals throughout the album. «inthel» could be lifted straight from a Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus album, with its mix of storm and running water background, shaker, and medieval female vocal singing:

Your radiant flames rush upon these bound lands
The pounding waves of sound roll in from above
Oh sunderer of darkness to unchain hands
filling caves of my soul with immortal Love.

Anyone with experimental leanings in their musical tastes should find plenty of intriguing sounds here among the mish-mash of traditional Middle-Eastern, Native American, Negro slave, “Two-Thirds World,” and experimental underground music. Most listeners will lack the patience or understanding to tolerate Prayers to Be, and “pretentious” will for sure come up more than once among those who can comprehend this project. Those for whom the music ends up as novelty or background noise, however, may still find nourishment in the overall concept and intense lyrical content. The project is unique enough for everyone to hear it and make their own call. And since it’s a first-time effort at music-making by Krueger, we can expect more mature offerings in the future. [Josh Spencer, The Phantom Tollbooth, 3/5/99]

The first thing you notice is the packaging, a 5-1/2″ x 8″ booklet using a warm, earthy palette. The CD itself is found in an envelope made from the cover and a few pages from an old hymnal. The foreword begins:

Our most intimate conversations can only be with God. For with
people we must translate our thoughts into languages of the body
and spoken word. But God hears our thoughts in unfiltered purity
at the very moment we ourselves think them. He responds to our
souls in a language more native, more intimate and pure than
even our dreams could manufacture.

Thus is framed this exploration of musical conversation with the living God. They employ many voices in this exchange, including doumbek, djembe, shofar, cello, bouzouki, guitars both clean and distorted, Casio keyboard, programmed drums, and of course the human one. The head of this project, Scott Krueger, says that its philosophical intention is “to be like modern days psalms with a strong emphasis in the praxis of the early church.” The name “psalters” is an identity rather than a band name, “people intending to glorify God through music.”

The end result of all this is unique and engaging. The opening track «All Yeshua!» spans the stylistic spectrum, and makes it clear that this is not over-produced, over-sentimentalized worship music. It is emotionally raw, with a highly experimental edge. It also features a beautiful Hindi melody, «Hadai Awaaz», mixed in with the screaming, drum loops, and Middle Eastern drums.

Michael Knott‘s influence is made known, directly through a quote in the booklet and indirectly in the writing. This is most striking in «Fattened Frothing Swine», which almost sounds like an out-take from a Browbeat disc. This track, however, is a bit of an oddity content-wise in that it steps away from direct dealings with the vertical relationship to God into the realm of commentary.

This disc also demonstrates how to make a lot out of very little. The very bare arrangement of Milton Brunson’s gospel tune «I’m Free», a cappella except for a djembe, is sonically sweet and simply striking. The “Amen!” and applause at the end of the recording is certainly well-deserved. Many other tracks consist merely of a voice and a single instrument, and I wouldn’t have them any other way. So little is needed to establish the connection with God, at least on the human end of the transaction, and these psalters do an excellent job of refraining from unnecessary clutter.

Frankly, some of this music is odd and goes well beyond the bounds of world music. For instance, the instrumental live track, «On Ruach», is somewhat of a cross between a basement jam session and an avant garde classical composition. Burnt Toast Vinyl, home of the experimental noise band White Trash, Inc., is not afraid to leap the walls of normalcy in search of new expressions of spiritual creativity. Consequently, ‘Prayers to Be’ is probably the most intriguing piece of music to hit the Christian scene this year. Its fresh presentation keeps me pondering mysteries, a quality too often absent in worship music these days. [Titi Ala’ilima, The Phantom Tollbooth, 12/17/98]

CD tracklist:

01. All Yeshua
02. Brux in a Box
03. Fattened Frothing Swine
04. El Elyon
05. I’m Free
06. intheI
07. Red
08. Hideaway
09. Words… on Ruach
10. Flood Me, Burn Me