"Ginkgo Biloba" by Ieere
Review
I do like sharing with you music which not only inspires my writing but also challenges my communication skills such as they are.
This review scores on two fronts in that respect: the inherent qualities of the song and in the interesting route by which it came to my attention.
Let's start with the latter as the former is consequent upon it.
I certainly have written about vocalist Claire Glasbey in the magazine on several previous occasions. You'll find her under her stage name of Miss Songbird. However I've not managed to review her for seven years: mostly I think due to other arcs in her life heading off into other directions. However given that this act of hers was essentially a covers one (I saw her play with the likes of this magazine's Paul Englefield and with Chris Gibbons), there wasn't a great deal of scope for releases etc. However behind the scenes she has been a strong supporter of what we've done & that's probably not terribly well known.
However I was greatly & pleasantly surprised when she told me some months ago that she was working with the band Ieere on new, original material: which immediately opened the door for articles like this one. Moreover, the album (it's called 'Sad Moon, Sleepy Heads' and is out next year) is centred around the work & ideas of Goethe. Well that scores full marks on the culture register and frankly I never anticipated writing those words. Even without Claire's involvement, I believe that this is the sort of thing we need to share & promote given the likelihood of mainstream media attention being sadly far from assured.
Begore plunging into telling you about taster single "Ginkgo Biloba" (out on World Tree Day on November 21st), I'd better say a bit about the band: especially since they've been around for over twenty years (a personal record for belatedness in writing about).
Taking their name from the German for "emptiness", the lineup here is Simon Monaghan (lead vocal/electric guitar), Dom Hanway (bass guitar/electric guitar), Jon Fisher (trumpet) and Claire Glasbey on backing vocals (look out for Claire on lead vocals on "Earth Spirit": the next single).
I say "band": they identify as a collective and publish poetry books as well as having put out albums including 'Compassionate Ride' (2005), 'An Alleluia Of Sorts' (2009) and 'Ever Being On Lark Lane' (2011) and singles such as "Ubuntu" (2014), "Yellow Tango Ball" (2023) and "Dolorosa" (2024). Their work generally explores spiritual and social themes: again plenty of rationale for me writing about them.
Recorded at Gighouse Studios with Andie Thomson as sound engineer, "Ginkgo Biloba" did not strike me as any sort of quote from Goethe (and in fact it's the name of the maidenhair tree) but I was wrong: he actually wrote a poem on the subject in 1815 which concerns his muse Marianne von Willemer and leaves from the tree formed tokens of their relationship.
If, like me, your acquaintanceship with Goethe is based around ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther' then, also like me, "Ginkgo Biloba" can be a very helpful nudge into looking into other aspects of his work & life. And what an excellent inspiration for a song!
So what does it sound like? Well you might speculate reasonably around possibilities which might include nods to Beethoven given the subject or perhaps given the information given above, something in the realms of high art and limited accessibility. But you'd be wrong: musically it's contemporary and very welcoming. To be honest you could fully enjoy the song without engaging with the thought & tribute in the lyrics and equally the penny drops as to why Claire is now part of the picture.
This is a soul record.
Which I guess does connect with the sentiment and you might make a tortuous point that if one of the giants of German Romanticism was to make a record, soul might be the genre of choice.
I suppose the first reference point for me was Blue Rondo à la Turk: they too were a collective and their exploration of funk, jazz, pop & soul in the very early 1980s reminded me a little of what Ieere are doing here with "Ginkgo Biloba". I don't know how helpful that is but it assisted my thinking. At any rate their experience & taste ensures that they play a potentially complex hybrid with assurance & no little verve.
Lyrically you can tell they write poetry and have no fear of using polysyllabic words nor imaginative phrasings: which they make fit the tune snugly. One would hope that a postulated time travelling Johann Wolfgang would not only embrace the musical form but appreciate his heartfelt sentiments being expressed in the twenty first century idiom.
A couple of years before Blue Rondo à la Turk materialised, Madness had a slogan "Fuck Art, Let's Dance". If you pardon the vulgarity, I think "Ginkgo Biloba" proves that the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
