Another Form of Relief

It’s an odd journey that has led to The Twilight Hours. Long time readers will be aware of my love for late 80s / early 90s Minnesota band Trip Shakespeare. When that band dissolved, bassist John Munson went on to join Semisonic, while front man Matt Wilson seemingly wandered around in the abyss, releasing only one solo album in ten years. In 2001, Munson and Wilson formed The Flops, a two-man band that played a mixture of old Trip songs, some of Wilson’s solo work and some other bits and pieces. They released a grand total of one live CD, disappearing again in 2005. Sometime after that they started billing themselves as The Dark Nights, which has now morphed in to The Twilight Hours. Only now, seventeen years after the breakup of Trip Shakespeare, do we actually get some new material from two incredibly talented individuals.

And you know what? It’s slightly disappointing. I suspect this is because of how much I’ve built this up in my mind over the years. I adore those Trip Shakespeare records, as well as virtually everything Semisonic and Matt Wilson have put out in between. What I’m struggling with here is that this whole album feels just a little too MOR. There’s nothing strictly wrong with it, and Wilson’s vocal remains compelling throughout. It can’t seem to help remaining a little flat though.

That said, it has it’s moments too. The new arrangements for older Wilson songs Forgot Me Now and Queen of Tomorrow are largely successful. The song below, My Return, is the closest the record ever gets to the Trip sound of old. Vocals play off of each other, guitars rev into life and harmonies pop in at just the right time. It still feels like it’s being held back a little, but after this amount of time, I’ll take what I can get.

Stereo Night is out now in “Good enough for me” mp3 quality (160kbps) for absolutely nothing from the band’s website. Also available in “When it comes to music, I don’t like to compromise too much” mp3 quality (320kbps / $7) or “I’m a person of high quality, I’ll need your best music” CD for $10. More bands should be adopting this system.

The Flops make me sad. Not necessarily in a bad way, but sad nonetheless. The fact they don’t exist anymore doesn’t help, but the worst part is the feeling that they were the closest thing to ever sound like Trip Shakespeare. This isn’t really all that surprising given that both members of The Flops, Matt Wilson and John Munson, were in that band. I maintain that Trip Shakespeare are one of the most criminally underrated bands of the last twenty years.

The Flops, while never quite managing those dizzy heights, have that wonderful feel of nostalgia about them. They never formally recorded anything in the four years they performed, only putting out a live album instead. This was largely made up of performances of Trip Shakespeare and Matt Wilson material, with a few other bits thrown in. In 2005, The Flops project was deemed over and a new band was supposed to rise from the ashes. It never did. John Munson now plays in a jazz band, while no one seems to know what Matt Wilson is doing. Which is a shame as he is a ridiculously talented singer-songwriter.

This song may not work for you if you’re unfamiliar with the original, but it should hold up on it’s own. A mournful tale of the one that got away, supported by nothing more complex than a gently strummed guitar. If one song could pin down melancholy perfectly, this would be it.

Matt Wilson was the primary force behind Trip Shakespeare, a band I recently wrote about in some detail. However obscure Trip Shakespeare and their material may be these days, Matt Wilson has that topped with his own solo material. It’s almost as if the internet is trying to eliminate any references to Matt’s career. Which is very sad.

His website has been down for years, with no signs of a return. His album isn’t available anywhere, and finding even that tiny picture of him to the left was a near impossibility. Still, I eventually found one, so it’s time to give Matt a little credit, as his music really does deserve a bigger audience that it seems to have.

After Trip Shakespeare split in 1991, each of the members drifted their own separate ways. I don’t actually know what Matt did for quite a period here, only that he surfaced in 1998 with a solo album entitled ‘Burnt, White & Blue’. Critically it was well received, but was seemingly only purchased by nostalgic Trip Shakespeare fans and a few fans who discovered him through the popularity of Semisonic in the years following.

The album was made up of solid songs, but nothing as unique as Trip Shakespeare used to come up with. This could have been why the album never really became a success. The lyrical wit and bold experiments were gone in these songs, and Matt’s voice was far more restrained than it ever had been previously. This is not to say the material is bad. Each of the songs are good, displaying the lyrical complexity one would expect, occasionally even managing to rock out at the same time.

MP3 Matt Wilson – Sun Is Coming (expired) (Burnt, White & Blue, 1998)
MP3 Matt Wilson – The Trick (expired) (Burnt, White & Blue, 1998)
MP3 Matt Wilson – Descender! (expired) (Burnt, White & Blue, 1998)

MP3 Matt Wilson – Queen Of Tomorrow (expired) (unreleased, circa 1998)
MP3 Matt Wilson – Forgot Me Now (expired) (unreleased, circa 2003)

After this, Matt went on to work with John Munson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic) to form the Flops, a band who never recorded any material, and only toured playing acoustic versions of Matt and Trip songs. They released a live album in 2003, but the project wound itself up soon after. It’s unclear exactly what Matt is doing these days, so if anyone has any idea, please let me know.

Now I don’t really have any buy links for this album as it’s seemingly unavailable just about everywhere. All that is except for Audio Lunchbox. They have the entire Burnt, White & Blue album available for download in high quality. Best of all, with their 50 free mp3s offer, you can get it and a bunch of other material for absolutely nothing!

And if 50 free mp3s isn’t enough free music for you, don’t forget there is also a 50 free mp3 offer available from eMusic as well. I’m informed that May will be the final month that the 50 free mp3 offer will be available, so if you’ve been debating whether or not to give it a go, now seems like the perfect time!

I’d like to preface this post by saying that I really wish I had a better picture to offer, but there seems to be hardly anything in the way of Trip Shakespeare pictures, or indeed any kind of references, anywhere on the net. There does seem to be a few fan sites put together years ago, but hardly anything, which is shame. Spurred on by this, and the encouragement I got from one of the comments left on yesterday’s post, I’m going to try something a little different here. This is going to be a complete retrospective of Trip Shakespeare, from their formation to breakup, loaded with mp3s of course, in the hope that I can put a few more people onto this great band that no one seems to know.

Applehead Man
Restless
1988

Trip Shakespeare began life as a three-piece consisting of three college students: vocalist and guitarist Matt Wilson, bassist John Munson and drummer Elaine Harris. Their early work was pretty shambolic, but did give an indication of the great things that were to come. Their debut album, ‘Applehead Man’, while largely incoherant and unstructured, did still manage to feature some gems amongst the weaker material. This album probably isn’t the greatest introduction to Trip Shakespeare, so if you’re actually reading the text rather than just grabbing the mp3s, I suggest both of you do stick with with these as the songs do improve greatly as the band develops. Still, that isn’t to say that everything from ‘Applehead Man’ is without merit. ‘Pearle’ is the first hint of what will follow on later albums, richly textured romantic pop that manages to sound familiar and yet original at the same time.

MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Pearle (expired)

Are You Shakespearienced?
Twin/Tone
1989

Oh what a difference a year can make. In between ‘Applehead Man’ and ‘Are You Shakespearienced?’, Trip Shakespeare underwent a number of changes. The most vital of these was the addition of Matt’s older brother Dan to the group as an additional vocalist and guitarist. With him came wonderful harmonies a tighter style of music. It was still daring, but some of the extremes of eccentricity from the first album had been reigned in. Matt also developed greatly as a songwriter in this time. Rather than songs where the lyrics were second the music, the lyrics become one of Trip Shakespeare’s most defining elements. ‘The Lake’ is a perfect example of this new found confidence, harmonies and duelling vocals are littered throughout a song about a couple heading toward a breakout on the river’s edge. ‘Two Wheeler, Four Wheeler’ is a wonderful nostalgic look back to a time when everything was simpler, and ‘Toolmaster of Brainerd’ is a rambling, amusing tale that showed an entirely different side to the band. It is ‘Reception’ that is the crowning achievement of this album though, a melancoly song about a man going to the wedding of the woman he is in love with. It was this kind of mature songwriting that would become more central to the work of Trip Shakespeare over future albums.

MP3 Trip Shakespeare – The Lake (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Two Wheeler, Four Wheeler (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Toolmaster of Brainerd (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Reception (expired)

Across The Universe
A&M
1990

‘Across The Universe’ was the first album recorded by Trip Shakespeare for a major label. Thankfully though, this didn’t lead to a diluting of their sound. In fact, the increased production budget available to them allowed them to create their most solid work yet. ‘Across The Universe’ is the natural evolution from ‘Are You Shakespearienced?’, bringing more of the things that made that album so good (the harmonies, the maturity of the words) and relaxing the use of the things that didn’t work so well (the whimsy). This album also represents a shift of the band to a more collective style. The songwriting duties and vocals are split much more evenly between the two Wilsons and even allowing Munson a share of the vocals, which only helps their sound. ‘Snow Days’ is one such example for this, giving us the perfect winter song, full of vivid imagery of snow falling, roads being closed and children playing. Matt’s melancoly side surfaces once again on the wistful ‘Drummer Like Me’ about a man who has given up his well paying job to become a drummer, finds himself struggling and now isn’t so sure that it was the right thing to do. ‘The Slacks’ is the one song where they do let their goofy side rip again, and it’s worth for the highly amusing tale of each of the band members trying to win the heart of a “one-eyed lady in France”. The back and forth vocals that descend into all out arguing at one point somehow manage to work perfectly when it should have become silly a long time before this point. Munson returns to vocal duties on the mournful ‘Late’, a song where his wife is off doing things she shouldn’t be, but he loves her too much to do anything about it as she still comes back to him. (Side note: I’m listening to this album as I’m writing all of this, and it’s so hard to not just put up every single song. It’s quite awful having to pick out a mere handful from each album given how great they all are.)

MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Snow Days (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Drummer Like Me (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – The Slacks (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Late (expired)

Lulu
A&M
1991

And so we reach the final full length Trip Shakespeare release. One of the great things about Trip Shakespeare though is that they managed to go out while at the top of their game, rather than following the steady decline route that so many other bands follow. ‘Lulu’ is their most confident work in every regard, they take more risks, and play up their vocal talents no end, even going so far as to open with an a cappella introduction. It’s also their most consistant work, where everything comes together perfectly, and on a personal level, it also has a lot of my favourite songs. ‘Jill Can Drive’ is a great little story about the eponymous Jill, a woman who works at the local store who isn’t thought of as very much, but becomes a fully rounded character in the few minutes of this song. ‘Bonneville’ is the perfect summer falling in love, not a care in the world kind of song that is almost too cheerful for it’s own good. ‘Today You Move’ brings us back to Matt’s wistful territory, as he helps his friend (same one as in ‘Reception’?) move, while finally realising that he loves her (“Now with the bedframe up the staircase / We’re through with the move / And if you thought you had enough space / I’d move in with you”), but the songs finishes before we get a resolution, which is probably for the best. ‘If You Miss Me’ is an appropriate finale to the album, seeing as it then becomes “last song” so to speak. It’s all self-explanatory enough: guy is away from girl, but wants girl to know he’s really there with her, and it all makes a fitting end.

MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Jill Can Drive (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Bonneville (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – Today You Move (expired)
MP3 Trip Shakespeare – If You Miss Me (expired)

After Lulu..

Shortly after the release of ‘Lulu’ in 1991, A&M dropped Trip Shakespeare and the band decided to go their separate ways. Before they did, they put out a final EP made up entirely of covers of artists like Big Star, Husker Du and Neil Young. It wasn’t a crowning achievement by a long shot, but it made for a nice send off.

Following this, most of the band found themselves in other ventures. Dan Wilson and John Munson went on to found Pleasure, who later become the mildly successful Semsionic. Matt Wilson released some solo material before joining up with John Munson again to form the Flops, who released a live album a few years ago. Dan is now working on a solo album for Warner, due for release this year, and John is now a member of a new jazz trio called ‘The New Standards’. I may actually end up featuring Matt’s solo work on here at some point as I think it’s also deserving of attention.

Now I realise that a post of this length entirely about a band hardly anyone has heard of is mildly self indulgant, but that’s the point of these things, right? And I know it’s cliche, but if it puts one person onto the greatness that was Trip Shakespeare, then it was certainly worth it on my part. I wish I could offer up some buy links for these albums, but they have all been out of print for an incredibly long time. It took me about a year of waiting for them to come in at Djangos before I eventually got them all, so that’s about all I can suggest if you feel like trying to get hold of this material yourself.