Matthew Herbert :: Brother, Where Are You?
A few years ago I started working jobs that require me to use my brain. Whilst this is mostly a good thing, it did have an unfortunate side effect: for at least 40 hours a week, I can no longer listen to music that demands to be listened to. Instead I’ve acquired an appallingly large library of trip hop and cocktail-party jazz. And some of the library counts as both. Enter Verve Remixed, et al.
I’d imagine most of you, dear readers, have frequented the occasional cafe or boutique that plays these remix albums, which pair an old jazz standard with a contemporary DJ. I’ll be the first one to admit that these albums contain their fair share of travesties. By travesty I mean that a goddesses of jazz is trying to sing us heartsore — except some poor fool has over-sampled the auditory equivalent of children blowing bubbles naked in the sun.
But every once in a while there is a gem. This song is one.
Matthew Herbert is, in my humble opinion, one of the geniuses of electronica. As an added bonus, the man just gets jazz, blues, and big band. I love him. I also love Oscar Brown, Jr.
The version of Brother, Where Are You? remixed by Matthew Herbert appeared on Brown’s live album Mr. Oscar Brown Jr. Goes to Washington. It is lovely and a little bit hollow. You can just feel the singer wandering city streets, on a rainy autumn night, in a solitary search for his brother.
Herbert’s version retains all the longing and character of the original while making the song rounder fuller, and just more populated. It becomes about more than one solitary man searching for his brother, and it gives me hope. In strange and inexplicable ways, it becomes about all the brothers America has lost—to prison, to gun violence. Somehow it makes me feel like there’s almost enough of us, and he’s always just around the next corner.
Brother, Where Are You?
Matthew Herbert (homepage)