“A few days after this experience, I was listening to [New Grass] and something sounded familiar. Harris was playing that exact same rhythm on his ride cymbal and snare. But instead of being sonically surrounded by energetic poly-rhythms and call-and-response vocals, his rhythm was inhabiting its own space among languid melodies, a bed of organ tones, and patient vocals. A closer listen revealed that his kick drum was, at times, percolating in syncopation with the ride rhythm and then countering it, much like the way the various rhythms of the African ensemble pull and release against each other. Harris seemed to be doing this in order to divide up the insistent 3/4 time, to reinforce the downbeat of the snare drum. Pushing and pulling the rhythm like this gives the song it’s forward motion but also props up the back beat.
I’m not sure if he was cognisant of the parallels between what he was doing and the ancient rhythms of the Ewe tribe, but it doesn’t matter – what he did was too creatively genuine to be guilty of “exoticism”. It’s completely brilliant, and, in my opinion, one of the best drum performances in rock history. “ – Mike Weis, “Spirit of Talk Talk”, 2012.
I thought I loved the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein but I had only ever seen them reproduced page size so how could I even know? Until last week, when I found myself in a room for the first time ever with an actual Roy Lichtenstein painting. Now I definitely love the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein. It is the scale that makes them make sense. Small, in a book, his paintings appear mechanical, machine made, a screen of dots. But at their true size you can lean in close and see that every single dot is hand painted.
New Grass is a song that wants to keep us at a distance, admiring its incredible beauty, unable to bring the dots into focus. It doesn’t want us to see the brush marks. But do lean in closer for a bit, like Mike Weis did when he noticed the brush marks made by Lee Harris.
New Grass is hard to focus on, isn’t it? Like the faintest stars, the ones you can’t see if you look straight at them. It’s a mirage, a chimera; go now and listen intently to every moment of New Grass. Bet you can’t.
New Grass fan videohttps://youtu.be/BI_c7hflLhY?si=D9EK9PVgYmbkBdVg
Roy Lichtenstein https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/roy-lichtenstein-learning-resource