Conspiracy CD is haunting
The Willard Grant Conspiracy. The name evokes mystery -- and so does the new Conspiracy album, "Regard the End," which is laced with an eerie but transcendent darkness. Songs about death meet songs about heaven, ghosts, fear, and redemption. "Mortality is the grand theme here," says singer-songwriter Robert Fisher. "The characters learn that they're not indestructible. They learn to deal with their death. It's how you relate to your death that defines how you live."
Heavy words, but they shouldn't come as a shock from Fisher, the brooding genius behind the Willard Grant Conspiracy, a loose collective of musicians who come and go according to his vision. The band's name is purely made up and doesn't relate to any historical event, even though it may suggest some cowboy plot from the 19th century.
The new album, coming out Tuesday, is a masterful collection of gothic Americana music, filled with Fisher's evocative, subtly shifting baritone, deeply probing lyrics, and various folk-noir colors from electric and acoustic guitars, violin, mandolin, trumpet, and drums, along with hushed backup vocals from Kristin Hersh, Jess Klein, and Blake Hazard.
Many of the musicians are from the Boston area, as was Fisher, who lived here for 23 years before just moving back to the Mojave Desert in California, where he grew up. Before he left, however, he shared his thoughts about the new studio album, which this time blends original songs with some haunting traditional tunes that Fisher reworked.
"I wanted to make a certain examination of traditional music vs. my own," says Fisher, an intense, bushy-bearded presence who talks about music with an intellectual acuteness reminiscent of Paul Simon's. "And looking at traditional music was a way to look at how you're measuring up yourself. . . . My goal was to make it seamless, so unless you were looking at the song credits, you couldn't tell what was new or old."
The album, which is coming out on well-respected local indie Kimchee Records, starts with an 1865 tune, "River in the Pines." It's about two ill-fated lovers who meet premature deaths, one by drowning accidentally.
"I found the subject matter to have resonance in modern life. It's funny how an old song can have an effect on you that the current Top 40 will never have," says Fisher, who transforms the track into a kind of Townes Van Zandt elegy. Of the more hopeful pieces, there is "Soft Hand," a sweet love song that Fisher also let the Farrelly brothers use in their recent film, "Stuck on You." And the original "Fare Thee Well" is a brilliant meditation on perseverance: "Faith can heal a lot of wounds here at night in this rented room," he sings.
"The directness of his lyrics is amazing," says Pete Sutton, a Boston bassist who played on most of the new tracks. "There's not a word that is wasted. The lyrics lend themselves to the songs, which are simple but powerful.
"Robert is one of the few people I've met who always has a vision," adds Sutton. "He knows exactly what he wants the music to sound like. A lot of people are talented but don't have a vision."
The most stunning song is "The Ghost of the Girl in the Well," about a child's tragic fall. The lyrics were written 15 years ago by Manny Versoza of the Boston band the Walkers (Versoza later died in a van accident while on tour with the Silos); Fisher added the music. What makes the song so affecting is the backup singing of Hersh (from Throwing Muses), who plays the role of the girl's ghost.
"Kristin is a friend," says Fisher. "I asked her originally to play drums on the song, but she said she'd sing. And that floored me because she doesn't do that very often on other people's records."
"This was unusual, and I was very nervous," says Hersh. "I was terrified, but it was a labor of love and an honor to do it. Robert asked me to choose a song, and I chose `Ghost of the Girl in the Well,' but I didn't tell him at first. Then he suggested it, and it was perfect because that was the song I wanted to do anyway."
Fisher, now 42, cut the initial tracks in, of all places, Slovenia, where he was on tour last year.
"We were playing two festivals there and had five days between them, so I decided to do some recording," says Fisher, who did the overdubs later. And once again a rotating cast of players was used -- actually, 31 different people have at one time or another been members of the Willard Grant Conspiracy since its inception in the mid-'90s.
"To have a core band of just three or four people is limiting. It's a very limited palette," says Fisher. "Instead, I have an extended family that allows you to have an infinite variety."
Musicians from Boston to Holland and Japan have been part of the rotating cast. In the album's liner notes, Fisher writes: "If someone says they play with us, they probably do."
