Impressionist pop duo Edmondson debuts album "Strange Durations"
A version of this piece appeared in The Fine Print's summer 2017 issue.
Imagine opening a door to a room that only you know exists. The wooden floor panels creak under your feet as you step out of the shadows and tiptoe towards large windows. Sunlight dances through the branches of redwoods and decorates your body. You feel warmth, safety, peace.
Edmondson’s debut, “Strange Durations,” released on vinyl and digital formats from Gainesville label Elestial Sound, features lush, dreamy arrangements on piano, guitar and saxophone. In turns gentle, whimsical and stirring, “Strange Durations” expresses joy, pain and the contemplative moments in between.
Brothers Robert and Jack Edmondson recorded the album during a pair of summers spent in California. For those two magical seasons, days were spent reading, visiting the Pacific and playing music. What resulted are ten songs that swell and fade like the ocean, songs that merely suggest, rather than insisting on, a mood or feeling.
From the groovy guitar noodling and hummed vocals on “Possession” to the cracking of the piano bench captured on “Newness,” the arrangements on Strange Durations allow listeners the freedom to explore their inner thoughts. The songs aren’t minimalistic, but they breathe.
“I really love melodies that have a sculptural quality, ones that trace a clear, strong shape,” Robert said. “I’m also attracted to the weightless feeling of working without a steady pulse, using percussion more as a voice than a timekeeper.”
Lyrically, Strange Durations weaves together notions of the mundane and the spiritual. For Jack, who wrote the bulk of the album’s lyrics, inspiration is oftentimes spontaneous and surprising. He wrote “Mobius Strip” one day at home when he couldn’t get the words “and the dishes still need to be done” out of his head. Words strung together gave birth to melody and rhythm, and he finished the song in an hour.
Other times, it takes a little help from your friends, or your dad. Musician, music arranger and transcriber Tod Edmondson helped his sons by crafting horn and percussion arrangements for the album, and by encouraging them to open up their minds.
“My dad would just say, ‘Play that differently,’” Jack said. “He helped me figure out things I literally am incapable of thinking of.”
Themes of family dynamics float throughout Strange Durations. Robert said the album served as a way for him to make sense of the changes his parents’ relationship underwent over time.
“Writing music was a way to express these things that I couldn’t put into words, as cliché as that is,” he said. “The moods captured on the album present the hopes, fears and desires I had for our family.”
The brothers Edmondson each credit each other as sources of continuing inspiration and support. When it comes to creative collaboration, blood ties make communicating complicated ideas easier. When no one else understands what you’re trying to say, your brother knows. There’s safety and freedom in that feeling.
“We’ve become less sensitive to each other in unimportant ways and more sensitive to hearing what one another is doing, feeling and thinking,” Robert said. “Being brothers allows us to take two separate but similar experiences and bring them to the same place in music. A sibling will always be the closest there can be to simply being you. That helps in understanding what you’re trying to say, musically or otherwise.”
Both father and sons Edmondson will tour the southeast in a converted bus this summer with support from musicians Tristan Whitehill, Ryan O’Malley, Nick Mendez and Jake Tobin. They will play Heartwood Soundstage in Gainesville on May 20, 2017.
https://edmondson.bandcamp.com/album/strange-durations