Arthur Russell and the Flying Hearts f/ Allen Ginsberg: "Ballad of the Lights"

The 2000s saw the legacy of Arthur Russell solidified after decades, both in life and after his death in 1992, spent languishing in obscurity. With the help of longtime partner Tom Lee and enthusiastic support from musicians like Jens Lekman and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor (who released a Russell song on his label Terrible Records in 2009 and mixed many of his country and folk singles), Steve Knutson of Audika Records has brought to life a vibrant and distinct catalog of material from Russell’s countless hours of unreleased recordings, making it easy for the uninitiated to discover Arthur Russell as a leftfield pop auteur.

Reissues of World of Echo (1986) and Another Thought (1994) would have merited celebration alone, but 2004’s Calling Out of Context, 2006’s First Thought Best Thought, and 2008’s Love Is Overtaking Me demonstrated Russell’s versatility to stunning effect. The three compilations showed off Russell as a synth-pop artist, as an important part of New York’s downtown music scene in the 1970s, and as a singer-songwriter—and any one of the three could have served as the cornerstone of someone else’s career. That all three failed to launch a fruitful professional career (and largely never saw the light of day while he was alive) is evidence of Russell’s predisposition toward self-sabotage, as the music itself sounds surprisingly timeless, undated by either equipment or production.

Less documented, at least across this catalog, was Russell’s relationship with beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whom he knew, lived near, and performed with for much of his life. “Ballad of the Lights” is the first collaboration of theirs to be unearthed in Audika’s extensive reissue project; it sees Ginsberg narrate the verses of a pop song from the same late-seventies period that made up much of Love is Overtaking Me, when Russell performed with ex-Modern Lover Ernie Brooks and a handful of other players under the name the Flying Hearts. At the heart of the piece, and particularly its first section, is Russell’s cello, which drones on in single note phrases as Russell meditates. The stark difference between Russell and Ginsberg’s voices becomes clear almost immediately, as the two half almost totally disparate ranges, with one occupying the song’s low end and the other dominating the mids and highs.

Almost two-thirds of the way through, the arrangement shifts drastically, with Russell’s cello replaced by warm organ, guitar, and percussion, turning utterly pop-oriented as the narrative itself gets darker, exploring alienation and the meditation’s failure with no real sense of resolution. Ginsberg’s accompaniment sounds much less tacked-on suddenly, and it’s practically melodic in the song’s final minute, a tribute to either the arrangement’s strengths or Chris Taylor’s mixing job (or, more likely, a combination of both).

In the wake of Love is Overtaking Me, this is minor Arthur Russell, less a revelation than a curiosity, and its release as a single is more than likely a consequence of Ginsberg’s presence more than anything else. However, anyone who liked that record—or much of anything from Russell’s vast, often extremely rewarding, and consistently unpredictable catalog—will likely want to seek out this companion piece. More where this came from would not be unwelcome.