Herb Sundays 126: David Pajo
The mythic songwriter and musician (Papa M, Aerial M, Slint) with a Sunday Vacuum hitlist.
Herb Sundays 126: David Pajo
Apple Music, Spotify
Art by Michael Cina.
“David Pajo’s music has an aura. It’s not the kind of meticulously manicured presence that we know as the rock star trope. Dave’s is a quiet, resonant aura that emanates from the way his music narrates stories – especially when there are no words. Few people have even approached the kind of delicate rebellion that Dave mastered long ago. He’s also somehow managed to be at least an ephemeral part of, I believe, every band that has existed since 1994 (and also a few before then). I’m not sure if he’s just trying to win a bet with somebody, or if he just really likes people that much more than I do, but I’m forever grateful regardless, as his presence remains a constant inspiration.”
-Jeremy deVine (Temporary Residence Ltd.) for Herb Sundays
Editor’s notes: See bottom of the post for David’s track-by-track review!
While I didn’t plan for it, the first day of Fall indeed belongs to David Pajo. Indeed, the immortal Drag City record label (b. 1989) knows this too and has not only put out an Aerial M (one of Pajo’s many aliases) Peel Sessions LP but also just announced a new Papa M (yet another) album last week.
A great paragraph about the challenge of being a fan of Pajo (b. 1968 Texas, famous for coming up in Louisville, KY) which also serves as an erstwhile biography comes from
by way of Pitchfork 20 years ago. Since then, this opacity has only remained:“Pinpointing Pajo has always been my problem. When explaining your musical lineage to quasi-compelled pals, I'm tempted to scribble flowcharts and draw convoluted figures on oversized sheets of graph paper: thick, black lines are scrawled from Slint to Tortoise to Zwan; little blue streaks shoot from M to M Is the Thirteenth Letter to Ariel M to Papa M; yellow stripes stretch from Mogwai to Matmos; with Will Oldham projects always in red, and written in cursive. Instead, I talk it through with sharp, pointed hand gestures and lots of squinting. Usually, my target stops listening, or fiddles with a cigarette, or just thinks that I'm being weird, and then I get nervous and tacit and play crowd-pleasing Justin Timberlake tracks on my stereo until everyone dances and forgets what we were talking about.”
Indeed, the Pajo trail is windy, and it's hard enough to follow his solo jams alone, not to mention his temporary placement in bands like Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Zwan, and more, how do you account for the cuts strewn across paper sleeved tour CD singles, and split 7”s. We go back to the turn of the Millennium Pitchfork via William Bowers for more breadcrumbs.
“Seems like every day I'm stooping to homeburn a Best of Papa M singles comp for some moody apprentice. Pajo practically gives us fans no choice-- how else can we include the crucial cuts from his three-inch single or his split-45s on long rental-sedan trips to our siblings' divorces? Dare the Papa end my copyright-infringing ways by packaging these as a double album someday, as the Wedding Present did with their Hit Parades? Shiiit, you throw in some prestigious liner notes by David Fricke, and I'd buy a permission slip to buy the thing.”
And then there's the Slint of it all, the zeppelin-sized shadow that haunts any DP convo, or Louisville's revered “post-rock” progenitors. I'll tread lightly with Slint, as I’m not a historian and there's more than enough written about them. There's also a 35th-anniversary reissue of TWEEZ out on Touch & Go soon which will spin up more stories, more Albini quotes, and the works. The immortal Spiderland cover image of Slint, shot by Will Oldham trying to tread deep water with his camera, and making the boys laugh, of course, is one of the great band shots like a Mountain Dew-ified noir ‘crick version of Minor Threat’s Salad Days, which Pajo recalled in Rolling Stone:
“We’re just all being youthful and happy,” he says, noting the smiles seen on the members’ faces on the Spiderland cover. “And the music is also very youthful in the sense that … when you’re younger, everything is so life-and-death and huge. So I feel that the whole record really is about that, just a snapshot of youthfulness: the romance and the despair and the laughter — just a bunch of kids being kids.”
But being a Herb I came to Pajo through the side window or the metal screen door in the back, via Tortoise and his Papa M album Live From A Shark Cage (Drag City/Domino, 1999) purchased at Neptune Records in Royal Oak, Michigan. Drag City even made a coin (DC170-COIN) to go with the cover, which I swear I saw at Neptune too. I have an eBay alert for it now.
The album has a lonely, desolate feeling, something very beautiful and personal. Nothing spells Fall/Winter more than this record for me, traversing salt-shredded Michigan freeways in dirty snow as the B-roll video in my mind. As per the time you even get the little voice mail memos on it, which Reddit told me "...where a series of answering machine messages playing over an ambient guitar. The spookiness of "Crowd" heightened by the knowledge that these messages were those left on Pajo's recently deceased grandfathers' machine." Perfect.
Or as the venerable Boomkat said:
"It’s a confusing M record to the extreme. If you’re the kind of person who hears voices, this record will only double your problem - there are found sounds, singing voices and instrumental voicings that will only increase the lack of peace in your troubled mind. And it’s all stretched tautly across the trademark guitar sting and smoothness that we’ve come to expect from David Pajo."
The reason Shark Cage holds up is indeed this fearful tenderness, this spooky fragility, and unlike some of the gloopier visions of Post-Rock that lived alongside it in record racks, a steely minimalism that has kept it wrapped in veil cloth amongst the sacred texts, a private canon of lonely, beautiful music.
His forthcoming Papa M album is called Ballads of Harry Houdini (Drag City, Nov. 22, 2024, closing the Fall, of course). I don’t know the name context but for a guy who has gone through myriad health scares (cancer, motorcycle wrecks, you name it), it feels just right.
The most striking thing is Pajo’s more gravelly voice, which he has said is tied to his suicide attempt in 2015. Pajo has been very transparent and vocal about his ordeal and has described a rebirth of sorts after it. “I believe depression and suicide should not be taboo," he told The Thin Air. "The media often talks about cancer, AIDS, and other terminal illnesses but depression and suicide rarely get any attention unless it’s unusual or a celebrity. We don’t talk about it amongst friends – we think it’s too morbid. But I’ve known more people who have died from suicide than any other illness. In my world, it’s a bigger problem than cancer. Yet it’s never talked about."
He expounded in the literary podcast Apology on his dealings with depression and on its importance as a clarifier, words we don’t hear often.
We salute our magician, who pops up unexpectedly to soundtrack a Skateboard short or cover the Misfits, in between late-night TV gunslinger stints with your fave band.
We’ll leave it to another pioneer, another un-rock myth, Bundy K. Brown, who wrote this for the bio for Shark Cage for Drag City, as I could never conceive words more perfect for the occasion.
"Yet I find myself returning to make late night headphone excursions into the depths of Live From A Shark Cage on a regular basis, reliving my favorite moments like a ripe, juicy eructation of chili cheese fries in the middle of the night, or reveling as I have in the deja vu-like discovery of some clever plot twist unearthed for the Criterion edition of Brazil....
Shark Cage deserves to be exalted in the same breath as Maggot Brain, The Payback, Stormcock or Miles' Pangea: modern masterpieces of minima built on subliminally insinuating rondos and vamps that echo not just Dave's own biorhythms, but a microcosmic take on the ur-pulse of the universe....If you are uninitiated, avail yourself. If you've been to the fountain, quench yourself again.”
David’s track by brack:
MOOG CITY - When my daughter was a toddler, she got really into Minecraft. When my son was a toddler, he also really got into Minecraft. To this day, they won’t turn down a chance to play together on my Xbox 360. We always enjoyed and talked about the music. Feels like they’re in the house with me again.
Little Rain - With any luck, it’s an overcast, cold, gloomy, Sunday!
London Blues - I loved Alan Wilson as a kid, I just didn’t know who he was yet. Back then, I thought it was Canned Heat.
Rheinita - Assembly line work is best done to motorik, amirite?
Change Me If You Can - These lyrics were clearly written by a white dude for grooming gals to convince themselves that subjugation is indeed what they want. Or maybe am I misreading!
You Can Have Watergate - Speaking of which, here is a palate cleanser.
I Know What Boys Like - Always wanted to cover this song, as a frontman, topless, Alan Partridge-style.
Deserted Cities of the H - Yes, ol’ slowhand / limpdick sucks fatness of all shapes and sizes! We know this. His playing in Yardbyrds / live Cream is my guilty pleasure. I play stuff I learned from a Cream solo every day. I shit thee not. It was one of the first solos I ever figured out by ear, it was 1983 and I was a little kid.
My Body JFK Part 1
Snow
You Wear It Well - At this point I need someone familiar to sing to me and I wanna sing along with someone besides me. And here are three very good reasons to heart Mekons yourself - Jon’s honest description of the (then) present state of his lower body, a Moog-based single they never sounded like before or since, and closing with Tom Greenhaulgh barking “I love you, I love you, I love you!”
She May Call You Up Tonight - The mess only seems to get wider and taller the longer you clean. With the news on mute, we slump on a pile, text a loved one, doomscroll, and there it is… good news!
Dream I Had, Part 2 - Well it sure cleans up nice.
Moog City 2 - Clean sheets / butt. Epic dreams 2nite.
I totally forgot about those coins -- I think they were like $3-$5!
Great one, Sam!
Definition of a GOAT <3