Desirea Rodgers Photo
Rodgers.
“All A Shimmer,” the first song on the album of the same name by Cindertalk (a.k.a. New Haven-born Jonny Rodgers) starts with a flurry of ascending wine glasses, like a curtain being pulled back, before landing on an affirming chord from a piano.
“There it is, all a‑shimmer,” Rodgers sings. “All a shimmering, the sea. / All a shimmer now for you. / All a shimmer now for me.” The melody is hymnlike, hopeful, looking upward. It’s a message about the kind of music Rodgers is putting out in the world and the way he hopes to connect with listeners.
And though the song was written and recorded before it happened, it could also be about Rodgers’s foray into starting a small record label, Off Atlas, which Rodgers — after weighing his options in a swiftly changing music industry — decided was the best way forward.
“It’s not something that I was going to do,” knowing all the work that it entailed, Rodgers said in an interview with the Independent. But then fellow musician and composer Sxip Shirey “put the bug in my ear.” It didn’t leave. He courted a couple labels with All A Shimmer that he knew were long shots. Meanwhile, he was rapidly accumulating instrumental releases that needed a home. He’d written music for The Psalms, a short documentary about the friendship between U2 lead singer Bono and author Eugene Patterson. He’d also composed pieces for dance companies, including for Lott Dance, Dance Waterloo in Austin, Tx., and Gallim Dance for a performance in New Canaan, Ct.
Meyer.
And — in a move that musician Ceschi might find familiar in starting his record label, Fake Four — Rodgers thought about the artists he knew whose music he loved, and how “not enough people are hearing their stuff.”
All of this music needed a home. So Rodgers is building one. And this week, Off Atlas launches with two releases: Rodgers’s own All A Shimmer, and Flowers for Anonymous, the latest album from The Soldier Story, a long-running project of New Haven-based musician Colin Meyer. The two albums were made independent of one another, but just as Rodgers and Meyer have played together and collaborated in the past, the two albums have much in common — and together make a strong statement as Off Atlas does precisely what its name suggests, moving into uncharted territory.
After the introductory title track, Rodgers treats the listener to “Mutter, Mutter, Mutter” — one of the poppiest, most danceable songs Rodgers has written in years, but still rich in the detail that years of musical exploration can yield, from the flourishes of unusual instrumentation to the seamless meter changes, to a surprise chord at 3:43 that tingles the spine and never appears again. Similarly, “One of Their Own” partakes of an almost African vibe, with an athletically staccato guitar bouncing off driving drums.
All A Shimmer also has plenty of the eerie beauty that Rodgers has made for years, in “Swing (Your Low Song)” and “Hurrah, Hurrah.” This musical vocabulary that takes a step forward into the stranger still with “Twitter Queen,” which finds Rodgers harmonizing with himself over a composition that shifts keys constantly over an odd-metered rhythm, yet still holds together.
And Rodgers proves he can still just write a simple song with the heartbreaking “I’m Only Dying.” It features Rodgers alone at the piano, singing a simple melody, a direct meditation on mortality that is somehow both devastating and uplifting.
Which connects almost directly to The Soldier Story’s Flowers for Anonymous. “I really, really wanted, for most of my musical life, to make really honest music, and be as open and sincere as I can,” Meyer said on WNHH’s “Northern Remedy.” (Click below to hear the full interview with Meyer.)
Where previous records (2009’s Wait and 2013’s Rooms of the Indoors) were full of metaphors, “this record is pretty direct lyrically,” Meyer said. “I kind of say exactly what I’m thinking.”
This approach lends itself to some disarming moments, in the sweet “Right Here” — Meyer’s first real swing at writing a proper love song — and in the wrenching “You’re All I’ve Got,” written in response to a relative dealing with a very difficult home life.
But Meyer hasn’t forgotten his musical roots playing in a punk band as a kid, or diving deep into U2 and R.E.M., bands that captured his imagination by delivering rush after emotional rush. So “Constant Crisis” bumps along on propulsive drum and bass lines, woven throughout with gritty guitar, and the opener “Artifacts of an Abandoned” has the feeling of striding — and then, when the drums kick in, sprinting — through a wide-open space.
Meanwhile, “Talk with Our Eyes” is the kind of song you can make when you’ve been making music in a studio as long as Meyer has. Textures shift, drums cut in and out in jolting, satisfying ways that rachet up the tension minute after minute, until all the elements are finally unleashed in the song’s final, anthemic third, which still ends in a whisper.
Both All A Shimmer and Flowers for Anonymous are albums that hit hard on the first listen, yet have layers of detail that reward repeated listens. Rodgers said that he is already reaching out to other artists who might be interested in releasing their music through Off Atlas. If more of this kind of thing — brainy music with a loudly beating heart — is what lies ahead, then listeners intrigued by these releases will surely follow Rodgers and Meyer across the musical map, wherever they may go.
