Namoli Brennet, Black Crow (Flaming Dame Records)
Namoli Brennet, Black Crow (Flaming Dame Records)
If I’ve said this once, I’ve shouted it from the roof beams: If all you’re going to do is sit, strum and sing, stand up tall and make sure you’ve at least got something good to say. Furthermore, as the old adage holds, if you can’t sing something nice, you’d do best to shut the fuck up entirely. More so than DJs or critics, everyone’s a singer-songwriter nowadays. As census numbers rise and the mortality rate of recording plummets, there’s more bad bastard music today than there ever has been. I blame CD Baby for a lot of it, but really, it’s endemic to our present culture of over-sharing and bloated self-worth. Be that as it may, I’ve never pointed my thick white digit at Namoli Brennet. No, not even once; I’m all thumbs full-mast in her direction.
As a transgendered woman, Brennet’s never been want of an interesting prompt. If she wanted to, every song in her ever-expanding catalog could be about her duckling-to-swan metamorphosis. And because she’s that gifted a writer, that talented a musician (not to mention drop-trou gorgeous!), I’d listen without prejudice to every last one of ‘em. And just as that record remains the high-water wreath for Georgios Michael, Black Crow might just be Brennet’s own magnum opus. A titan of understatement, Brennet says more with the title track’s nine-word verse than most hip young six-stringers do in a lifetime. For many trans folks trying to pass also as folk singers, it’s nigh on impossible to separate the artist from the art rendered. The lesser ones get caught up in their own crosstalk and never do usurp it. To wit, I’ve seen the best minds of feminism’s Third Iteration destroyed by madness and pretense. Consequently, that’s what makes Brennet’s take here so refreshing and worthwhile. First and foremost, she’s a singer-songwriter. A simple, but powerful tune like “Try,” in whichever arrangement you want, should make that truth self-evident.
If I dug down deep enough, I’m sure I’d find something here to connect the two — the nonpareil singer-songwriter and the transgender human par excellence. (In the interest of full disclosure and transparency, the first record I ever owned of Namoli’s was called Boy In A Dress.) I don’t suggest digging for what you don’t want to find, and looking back too far – especially within the trans community – just isn’t fair. Whatever skeletons Brennet has she’s no doubt gone through hell to keep hidden. And that kind of surveying, gross, is the regretful realm of muckrakers and the dying. Namoli Brennet is neither a politician, nor is she even close to her deathbed. Quite the contrary, her voice has never sounded more vital, her guitar more alive. Again, no matter the arrangement, a song like “Iowa” holds this certain truth at its centre.
Pundits argue that to be transgendered is to be innately political. The trans body, itself, is a bicameral Congress of its very own — or so they claim, anyways. Brennet’s titles here – “Freedom Train,” “Do It Now,” “Some Better World,” “Parade” – may read like torch songs, but ultimately such hotheaded polemics are beyond her. And despite how much I wish “Goodnight Arizona” was a kiss-off to Sen. Barry AuH20, any revolutionary who truly values the lives of his or hir proles has seen what rhetoric hath wrought. Like another girl in hiding, it’s a wonder Namoli Brennet hasn’t abandoned all her ideals. For fascists, to simply sit, strum and sing might seem so absurd and impractical. Yet Brennet clings to her non-stance because she still believes, in spite of everything, that her songs are truly good enough at heart.