Back in 1966, Rob Williamson’s voice caught on a bit of Scottish breeze and arched up and down through the following wisdom in “October Song,” the first thing The Incredible String Band ever had in the way of a hit: “I used to search for happiness / And I used to follow pleasure / But I’ve found a door behind my mind / And that’s the greatest treasure.” I’ve often wondered about that door — what exactly it is, at what point exactly at the back of the head it can be found, and where it is supposed to take you — but I fear Lungfish frontman and paranormal balladeer Daniel Higgs has just taken me two steps closer and one step back. In “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind,” the endlessly elongated opener on his new Say God double l.p., Higgs places a metaphorical horse inside the metaphorical cavern we humans tend to associate with the interior of the mind. Rather than let us marvel at its raven beauty, he makes it invisible and flips it upside-down, so that its hoofs just scratch the chamber’s sensitive upper surface.
Higgs sings and talks and coughs us through this image over the entirety of this 12-minute tangent, kneading it into our grey matter with the same relentlessness as the horse’s pattering legs. When he is not singing the song’s eternal refrain — “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind / That Holy Bible Time” — he is grandstanding about it, chalking it up to a mantra, narrating the process by which it saved his life and even the process of the song’s narration. And it hurts. All the soothing drones in the world cannot make up for how psychologically — and almost physically — uncomfortable we feel when we imagine that little animal poking around up there, kicking up the earth, knocking on the door. But if we set aside some genuine “holy bible” time for Higgs and his phantom horse — in the wee hours of the morning, lying on the couch, perhaps a little tipsy or maybe just feeling a tiny bit lost — we might be able to catch the moment when it finally stumbles upon a weak spot.
Daniel Higgs, “Hoofprints on the Ceiling of Your Mind” [Say God, Thrill Jockey]
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Words: Emilie Friedlander
Purchase Say God on CD or vinyl from the Thrill Jockey website.
Tags: Daniel Higgs, Footsteps on the Ceiling of Your Mind, Say God, Thrill Jockey
Whoa, this is a lot more out than I was thinking it would be and I love it. I guess I can’t really see dropping this in the club on a Saturday night, but it’s a helluva jam. Gotta get around to listening to the whole thing.