Alvarius B :: “That's How I Got To Memphis (And Other Egyptian Love Songs)” - Via Parigi
Photo: Hans Van Der Linden
There isn’t much else you can exclusively expand or elaborate on when it comes to the ever-changing atmosphere and esoteric ecosystem of perhaps one of the most fascinating and important figures in underground music in the last half century. Of course, we’re talking about Alan Bishop, or Alvarius B, depending on what side of the dilapidated and flaking painted fence you're standing on. His melodic manipulation of sound and art is both soulful and suicidally sophisticated and simply hasn’t changed direction or destination since the dawn of Mid-Western tricksters, Sun City Girls, towards the end of the 1970s. But one thing is for certain that we’ve seen throughout the years regarding Bishop’s biblically blissful solo career is his lustful love and worldly worship for the holy land in which the ballad so eagerly occupies. Whether it’s ‘Americanizing’, a Third World country confessional tune, bastardizing a Dylan-esque classic like “Queen Jane Specifically”, or breathing new life into “God Only Knows”, one of Wilson’s many masterful mentions into the void of the human condition, Bishop is a poetic purveyor at heart who perfectly demonstrates with dynamical delusions the romantic side of experimentation in his music to the point where listeners both new and old are confused whether they should hate it or not.
Photo: Alexis Iosifidis
Photo: Islam Mohamed
Bishop is often times occupying the spiritual suite and rudimentary responsibilities of being a cowboy with an accompanying mantra of - “fuck you, and the horse you rode in on”, while his stunning stead, a horse with no name, rides off into the dusty sunset, leaving a burning town in retro ruins just as the mountains clear in unforeseeable distance. Coming off the street carbonated roller coaster of 2017’s magnum opus “With a Beaker on the Burner and an Otter in the Oven”, a triple vinyl collection of songs ranging from harmonious headache to blissful ballads and everything/anything else in the between, Bishop systematically steered the ship towards zone Zion in some esoteric effort to successfully conquer, which he did, the numerous sound waves of cosmic climate change, scientific songwriting and of course, his iconic harassment in harmony across the albums 30 plus tracks of spiritual splendor and lyrical lunacy. The rhetorical resemblance of “With a Beaker on the Burner and an Otter in the Oven”, released on the French-based label Via Parigi, and his most recent effort entitled “That’s how I got to Memphis (and other Egyptian love songs)”, aside from their obvious cosmic characteristics, is simply the fact that their fractured flight patterns caustically cross via the visceral veteran’s diabolical discography and its log of lysergica.
Acting as singing sisters if you will, “That’s how I got to Memphis (and other Egyptian love songs)” is an even further expansion and electrifying exploration into what makes a musician a musician and this material simply identifies with Bishop’s harmonious heroes in a way that we don’t hear as often on his previous works such as the 1994 and 1997 self-titled albums, “What One Man Can Do With An Acoustic Guitar, Surely Another Can Do With His Hands Around The Neck Of God”, or his more unfamiliar unions like “Chin Spirits” and “Fuck You And The Horse You Rode In On”, though we must add that his vulnerable versions of Herb Alpert’s “This Guy’s In Love With You” and Glen Campbell's “Galveston”, “That’s how I got to Memphis (and other Egyptian love songs)” is a long-awaited homecoming of the century. Effortlessly embodying the more familiar friendships you find in inspiration, sonic seeking and longtime radio worship, Bishops pulls from the lustrous layers of legends like Gene Clark, the late Kris Kristofferson, of course, Dylan and Wilson and the legendary southern sermon that inspired the album’s title, Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis”. While the majority of these chosen tunes are virtually untapped and previously unrecorded, knowingly, throughout Bishop’s captivating career via live shows, album releases etc. except for Gallagher’s Rockabilly classic “Searchin’”, which has been in and out of Bishop’s sets as far back as 2019, the album’s calming content is the ultimate tonal testament to the musician’s labored love and deep admiration for the anatomical art and atmosphere of songwriting to date.
