Six years ago, Drag City tracked down outsider folk artist Gary Higgins and reissued his solitary lost album, 1973's Red Hash, a slow-burning work of art that was difficult to find on vinyl 30 years after its release. After that album and a new release by Higgins, 2009's overlooked Seconds, Drag City is now presenting Higgins' recordings made prior to Red Hash, a previously unreleased collection of six hushed, lovely songs that Higgins wrote and recorded in a Connecticut log cabin (eat your heart out, Bon Iver...) in 1970-71.
A Dream a While Back is a collection of Higgins' psych-folk music in its purest form. The expanded instrumental palette that fleshed out his songs on Red Hash—electric guitar, percussion, cello, flute, piano, organ, bass and mandolin—is nowhere to be heard; this is Higgins, a guitar, a room and a microphone, for better or for worse. Luckily, these are revelatory songs—in case there was any doubt, the curtain being pulled back reveals that Higgins is a master of his craft, carefully arranging his songs and maximizing their impact even at a rudimentary level. While he chose to color between the lines with new instrumentation on Red Hash, his songs are compelling without any extra flourishes.
Higgins' songwriting on A Dream a While Back remains recognizably his own. If anything, the stripped-back, solo recordings on this EP effectively draw attention to the haunting undercurrent that runs through his music. Higgins' influence on modern folk artists like David Tibet and Ben Chasny (both avowed fans; the latter covered Higgins' on 2005's School of the Flower) is indisputable, the through lines apparent: introspective, often bittersweet vocals; plaintive, melancholic guitar playing that conjures up a lonely atmosphere like clouds drifting across a barren countryside; an eerie air hovering over the recordings like the tape hiss coating several of these songs.
This may sound cheesy, but I find these basic, effective recordings to be a marvel—that one man is able to conjure up such poignant, atmospheric beauty with guitar and voice, and nothing more, is incredible. The sparse, simplistic nature of Higgins' songs make wonder whether folks leaning on extra instrumentation in the modern age are, in a sense, using their 'Get Out of Jail Free' pass. Higgins achieves an intimacy that many songwriters can only dream of: this is gorgeous folk music with no frills—Gary and a guitar—and it is perfect.
Music aside, I find it refreshing that Drag City (and perhaps Higgins himself) thought it best to release A Dream a While Back as an EP—six songs, 24 lean minutes. Far too many record labels assume that "more is better" when it comes to reissues, stuffing them with undercooked bonus tracks, alternate versions of previously released songs, pointless remixes and so on. A Dream a While Back points to the truth: more is not always better. Whether Higgins recorded more material than is included here is irrelevant. This is an archival release presented exactly as it should be—lean and potent without a bad song in the bunch.
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