Love Is Red

Biography

In Berlin there is a subterranean recording studio with red carpet and chandeliers, Telefunken microphones and Gibson acoustic guitars. It lies underneath a pre-war building pockmarked with bulletholes, its stone face adorned by a handcarved facade and a perfectly rusted old clock that hasn't ticked for sixty years. The clock's hands stopped, the locals will tell you, when the bombs started to drop. But they'll also tell you that the clock tells the correct time, twice a day. Here, secreted in a...

In Berlin there is a subterranean recording studio with red carpet and chandeliers, Telefunken microphones and Gibson acoustic guitars. It lies underneath a pre-war building pockmarked with bulletholes, its stone face adorned by a handcarved facade and a perfectly rusted old clock that hasn't ticked for sixty years. The clock's hands stopped, the locals will tell you, when the bombs started to drop. But they'll also tell you that the clock tells the correct time, twice a day. Here, secreted in an underground bunker with drummer Sim Cain and bassist John Abbey, David Poe made a record entitled Love Is Red. WHY BERLIN? They all asked. "The chicks," says Poe, no doubt referring to a red- headed dancer from the Frankfurt Ballet who graces the cover of the new CD. But the truth was that after the long process of creating The Late Album, the critically-acclaimed follow-up to his critically-acclaimed debut, Poe longed to make a record without robots, and he wanted to make it quickly. Enter Ulf Zick, the fresh-faced econo-mogul who runs Berlin's Ulftone music label. A longtime fan of Poe's shoot-from-the-hip live show, Ulf convinced the adventurous Jim Voxx, engineer and guitarist for the rock band Skew Siskin, that recording Poe's unpredictable trio live in his legendary Monongo Studios would be "fun." The answer to the question "Why Berlin?" soon became "Why not?" So it was that New Yorkers David Poe, Sim Cain and John Abbey went to Berlin in the cruel winter of 2004 to record this in-the-moment album. With no more Adornment than acoustic guitar, a peerless rhythm section and Poe's singular voice echoing underground, each song makes the case for the band and songwriting skills of David Poe, whose debut was awarded the prestigious German national critics poll prize, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, for Best Pop Album in 1999 and whose second record, The Late Album, was hailed by Rolling Stone as "...almost perfect...**** (4 out of 5 stars)". The set opens with the jazzlike "You're The Bomb," a metaphor song: "You're the bomb, they made you up in secret ... you're the bomb, you're my Manhattan Project ... without warning, without a sound, you hit the ground." Then Poe's knack for bittersweet pop kicks in on "So Beautiful," followed by the lilting bossa nova of the album's title cut and "Wilderness," a lyrical epic which postulates, among other things, "if the trees are the lungs of the world, the city is her cigarette ... you are clean, quiet as snow, darker than a forest ... you are my wilderness." It also features a particularly seductive cover version of Tim Hardin's "You Got A Reputation." Love Is Red might be called a return to form by those listeners who have witnessed the fire and beauty of Poe's trio in a live setting, or who have heard The Glass Suit, a rare collection of demo recordings that landed the young songwriter a recording contract with Sony/Epic in America and led to his eponymous debut (produced by T-Bone Burnett.) But the truth is that neither Poe's first nor The Late Album was made with the intent of distilling the strong cocktail that is Poe, Cain and Abbey. The new album, featuring songs from Poe's first two records and four new compositions, captures thearc of a typical live set. Brad Jones, the producer/mixer whose flair for the modern classic have led him to work with Josh Rouse, The Autumn Defense and Ron Sexsmith, stepped in to reimagine the raw recordings with deft mixing hands. With the same attention to detail and gift for the broad stroke that he brought to the production of Poe's second release, Jones further imbued the intimate songs of Love Is Red with a sense of warmth and immediacy. The album was mixed in a mere two days at The Maid's Room on Manhattan's Lower East Side, then mastered by Gene Paul (son of Les) in a few hours, with a bedraggled Poe, fresh from a tour of Spain, appearing at the last possible second to give the whole affair a jet-lagged thumbs-up before collapsing on the cutting room floor. Despite the frenetic pace at which it was made, Love Is Red is a long, languid journey into the dynamic repetoire of one of the world's greatest live bands. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.