Biography
After registering a blip in the Philly scene from 2012 to 2014 with the indie trio Big Tusk, David Thompson spent most of his 20s putting his money where his mouth is, organizing with other tenants and workers to help start the Philly Tenants Union and Philly Workers for Dignity. On a given Sunday you could catch him at the historic St. Clement’s Church singing anachronistic hymns or intricate choral Masses to a “small but spirited” group of parishioners. When COVID-19 hit, confined to a rented room, Thompson began feverishly finishing some songs.
“the wall” (2020) is David Thompson’s second official release as a solo artist. The first, 2017’s “Into the Night (2017 Version),” was an excrementally solipsistic exercise in recreating some music he’d written as a high-schooler in suburban central Florida. Though his efforts were met with little attention and less enthusiasm, Thompson nevertheless assembled a crack performance group for the collection’s promotion, bringing together his “talents” with those of such luminaries as Mel Hsu, Jess Best, Big Tusk alum Sam Long, Eric Sherman, cousin Bobby Davidson, Keith McMillan (who also mixed the album and whose writing and guitar playing had appeared on the original “Night”) and Eliza Edens, who provided creative consulting for “the wall.” As the Nasty Star Hermit Band they played a couple shows to middling audiences of other depressed kids.
Though the intrinsic failures of that project are evident, it served Thompson well in at least one respect: like pop-stars Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney before him, he had learned to perform every recording of the tracks on his albums. For the first time, with his increasing mastery over the magic of modern music production technology Thompson found himself well enough able to be his own backing band, neither an uncommon nor unwelcome (still sad 😔) experience among his contemporaries. This Pyrrhic victory ramified into the writing of “the wall,” which sees Thompson for the first time confidently playing with available production software and thereby expanding his palette, so to speak.
Raised on the muscular arrangements and carnal, romantic imagery of Bruce Springsteen, the unapologetic, deadening, beatific, sinister commercial energy of 90s VH1 and MTV programming, as well as the playful, elegant melodies of the American songbook and Classical art song, Thompson discovered his “gift” for writing pop songs early in high-school, a natural enough outlet for his acute expressions of hormonal poeticism and energetic musical talent. Thompson has since consciously incorporated the traditions of Brian Wilson, high Anglicanism, and Joe Hill. Together these make for a robustly white American artist, claims of political Marxism notwithstanding.
True fans will recognize the importance of Oppenheimer Analysis’s addition to this list for the sound of “the wall.” This last influence, an admitted beaux ideal of Thompson’s, puts one in mind of other great, reactionary artists such as Wallace Stevens and Kafka creating brilliantly in bureaucratic obscurity.
Let’s be real: all five songs on “the wall” invite repeat listening. The party begins with Thompson’s darkly driving and danceable paean to free-time, “time” (i.e., “time for the full development of the individual,” idle time, time for social activities, for higher pursuits, for disciplines, for experimental practices and materially creative sciences, for hanging out and playing). The titular “wall” cribs a melody from Gershwin 🙄 and a keyboard part from the theme of Cheers, and builds its chorus around the final organ cadence of Herbert Howells’ Anglican anthem “Like as the Hart.” “This goon cant” inhabits the miserable perspective of its co-writer, while “obsession” means nothing.
As for the rest, don’t miss Howe Pearson of TV Pole Shine shredding on “clair” … and look out for what’s coming! 👀👁✌️🔥🔥🔥❤️
