Imagine a man standing on a street in the evening. The moon is like a fingerprint of snow. Maybe this man is leaning on a lamppost or his bright long hands break from his pockets and come to rest on the back of his neck. He is in the classic repose of ponder. He is drenched in white thought. Maybe a black car pulls along side this man. A door opens and from within we see a quite haze of light pouring into air. In the light, is a seated man. When he smiles his teeth sparkle like watching tiny knives fall through water. The first man steps into the car. We all watch the car fade. Now, I say all this because it reminds me of a record label I want to talk about. Why it reminds me is because of this: the scene is dark and mysterious. There are archetypal images that resonate with us all. There are things happening on the surface but what were all interested in is what is not being shown or told, what the surface points to. The label is called ANTI- and it has some artists who evoke this very feeling and climate in their music and within us. In a sense it’s a small label with big names. This label is home to some of the greatest singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. The type of artists that in 200 years will still be downloaded into people’s bodies or played on people’s half inch invisible IPOD/George Foreman grill or whatever type of David Cronenberg technology/human hybrid we come up with by then. The point being the type of musicians on this label defies labels and will continue to do so until, well you get the picture. I’m talking about people like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Marianne Faithfull, Merle Haggard. In many real ways these artists are the flag bearing, flag creating troubadours for their particular brand of outsider music. T. Waits like some post-apocalyptic circus piper gathering and leading the flock to their utopian of nothingness that is down a gravel road. N. Cave holding the candle filled head of Baudelaire like a lantern that shows you to your room in the Lethe Hotel. Merle Haggard the poker pro, who only has teardrops and continents of authenticity to bet with, deals you in as you step inside the last underground bar of your mind. Marianne Faithfull the torchy chanteuse singing on the last night of her life in the wild warm smoke- light of a foreign opium den. She is the coarse heartbeat that makes their visions lucid and unknowable. It is amazing to me that such long lasting luminaries as these were let go by record labels or not offered contracts that were befitting of their talent and output. Is this a case of big corporate purging, downsizing the label mates who are not on MTV a zillion times a day and not selling an equal amount of albums? Weeding out the undesirable’s i.e… the ones who cannot be molded and shaped into an existing formula of sound and look, who refuse or can’t even imagine placating their art to bottom lines and demographic units. If this be the case, then ANTI- records was the best place for them to land. The label’s motto reads “Real artist’s creating great music on their own terms”. It’s nice to see that in an ever increasing industry driven by profit and pose that there are places for people who have had and still have so much to say and create, so much to inspire and compel, so much to resonate to our core. Essentially, a place to be able to continue a life’s work that allows the throngs of listeners and devotees to hear and have it uncut when it hits the streets, in the pure authentic way the musicians intended to be heard.
One must really give the glad hand to ANTI- for providing just that. As well, these big four are not the only good artists to dwell within the label.
Other genre pushing musicians who are currently making some wonderful music for ANTI are: Tricky, the late Elliot Smith, Neko Case, The Black Keys, Eddie Izzard, Joe Henry, The Promise Ring.