There is no quicker way to make me disregard a musician you’re recommending, no line to more immediately force me to role my eyes more comprehensively into the back of my head to the extent that they circle round to raise above my bottom eyelid with fresh knowledge of whether my frontal lobe should smile more, than to tell me that they’re a great guitarist.
This recommendation will come from people who would scoff at the volume of a bull elephant being neutered if you explained how some artist was worth listening to because they were a good singer or a great pianist or a extremely accomplished hydraulophone player. And, leaving the hairy old rock boi hypocrisy aside, they’d actually be right to. Just tone down the snark, OK lads? We’re all friends here.
Ability on an instrument, or with your voice, or in your funky feet, or in how your manage to manipulate water to generate sound hydraulically, is of course always laudable. You’ve put the time in there, bud, and you’ll make a spectacular session musician some day. But without the right palette on which to paint and without the artistic temperament to know which paints to use, you may as well be wafting the brushes around in the air pretending it’s a wand in order to ‘air cast’ your favourite Harry Potter spells. What I’m saying is, it’s what you do with it that counts.
Yeah? Y’get me ? It’s what you do with it that counts! Are you with me? Do you see the innuendo I’m making? I’ll say it one more time: It’s what you do with it that counts. OK, OK! He gets it! They get it! You get it?
I’m… I’m talking about a penis. Well, no, I was talking about musical ability, but then I did a little joke about a penis. It was very clever and very funny. Hit that ‘subscribe’ button as hard as you can. I’ve got that out of my system now.
Is Rachika Nayer a great guitarist? I mean… yeah, probably. Definitely. Lots of good diddle-iddle and oodly-woodly bits on her second album. But – Jesus fucking Christ – that’s not what makes here music so outstanding. The things she does with her guitar and the places she takes it are what make ‘Heaven Come Crashing’ essential.
She inverts the famous Jimi Hendrix Woodstock moment by instead setting her entire house on fire and rescuing her guitar, so that the guitar knows the high regard in which she holds it. She and the guitar composed music while watching her childhood home burn to the ground, Rachika having previously blocked off all the roads so no fire crew could stop the blaze. Mr and Mrs Nayer, unfortunately, didn’t make it out.
She throws her guitar a surprise birthday party and, just as the guitar’s heart is as full of love as is scientifically possible, she tears down all the bunting and angrily explains that guitars don’t have fucking birthdays and that her guitar will never be a real boy. She then records the dismay.
She hands her guitar a ‘Dinky Decker’ from her pack of Cadbury ‘Heroes’. Her guitar is thankful and excitedly wonders out loud what other adorable ‘miniature’ names they’ve thought of for the rest of the chocolates. Rachika explains that, no, they only did it with that one and didn’t bother with any others. She records the awkward, disappointed ensuing sadness.
She sits the guitar down and explains that, if she were its mother, it would have been so loved. Held in the arms of joyous light. If she were its mother, the world would have been warm. So much laughter and joy, nothing would harm. She couldn’t imagine the stain, the soul-stealing pain that the little guitar, it must have seen and believed, and the formulation of thought quickly taught, showed that it lived in a cruel, unjust world. Is this why it now decided no one will get the best of it? Is this why it does not hide nor shy away from taking back the world? Was it because so early in life all that strife wracked your little body with fear? The guitar appreciated this, and it also believed that its mother was to blame for everything.
She loves her baby, but not like she loves her guitar. Yeah, she would have aborted it but she’s not allowed to these days because Ron DeSantis said so, or something, I dunno, don’t ask me about that shit show over there.
She tells her guitar that comedy was now legal on Twitter, only for her guitar to excitedly open his app to see that was only true because people were absolutely ripping the piss out of the guitar.
That’s what this album sounds like.
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