[Editor’s note: In continuing our quest to become a complete cultural ourobouros, it seemed like the best way to cover this autOaudiO cover of a Virgin of the Birds song is for our own Jon Rooney (who wrote the song) to discuss this interpretation of it with fellow Bloggers of Wax Aurora and Patrick. Their conversation, which may only be delightful to me, the three of them, and hopefully Paul/autOaudiO, follows.]
Patrick: Is “Cardinal Points” a middle-aged cat?
Jon: No, “Cardinal Points” is not a middle-aged cat. It’s a song that I originally wrote a few years ago that our friend and Seattle musician extraordinaire Paul Baudry has recently covered as part of his autOaudiO project for Ball of Wax Quarterly Volume 67 (67!).
Aurora: or is “Cardinal Points” what happens when you ask His Eminence where the restroom is?
J: “Cardinal Points” refers to directions on the compass, you know – North, East, South, West – the classics. I took the title from a short novel from 1927 by the Surrealist Michel Leiris (which is often collected with the short novel Aurora) that I really liked. The novel opens with the line “I was at the theater” and keeps chooglin’ from there. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s chat about how great Paul’s music is. Right? That dude can do it all, he’s simultaneously deeply rooted in traditional Americana and has a rad vocabulary of electronic and ambient music. And I know I’m biased since he plays bass in Virgin of the Birds but screw it – Ye Olde Blog o’ Wax fears no conflict of editorial interest.
P: I am not convinced that “Cardinal Points” isn’t a middle aged cat considering the number of times it has been released. I think that it first appeared as a bedroom recording on a Song, By Toad release in 2015. [Rooney Note: it wasn’t a “bedroom” recording, it was recorded in a living room with Meursault genius Neil Pennycook on noise guitar and sampler] Then an a capella version showed up on BoW 44 in June 2016. And then the studio version followed shortly on the heels of that release in October 2016. Considering how much the BoW 67 version by autOaudiO purrs, I think that “Cardinal Points” is a cat just now passing through the middle section of its nine lives.
J: Or Paul is a master interpreter of other people’s songs, the keystone of folk music and all that jass. I forgot that there were so many versions of that song floating around but previous versions were either me dicking around or the mighty Colin J Nelson and I doing the “official” version for the record. But Paul made it sexy and wistful. Which I guess is very feline of him, so . . .
P: I am glad that we have agreed that “Cardinal Points” is a cat. A middle-aged cat. Many of your songs have had multiple releases, many lives. I am amused that you’d lost track of the release history of “Cardinal Points.” When did you learn that Paul was going to be doing a cover of it?
J: When Levi sent around the submissions for review [Levi sends an email out to BoW writers with links to the tracks for the upcoming quarterly release shortly before the songs are posted online]. A total surprise and thus far the musical highlight of 2022 for me personally.
P: Oh, wow. I am surprised and delighted to hear that. What were you feeling between reading the words “Cardinal Points” and clicking on your mouse to listen to the autOaudiO version?
J: I was sure Paul was going to do something great since I’ve been a fan of his autOaudiO stuff but was blown away and truly touched when I heard it. The performance is so confident and fleshed-out, accessible in ways that my brittle baritone could never pull off. The arrangement – oh, the arrangement!
P: I am amused by the opening notes of Paul’s arrangement. I know what it conjures in me. Aurora, Jon, what do you hear in those first few seconds?
A: So I had no idea autOaudiO existed and mostly knew Paul as a newer member of VotB as well as close-harmony singing, mandolin-playing, bluegrass guy, and I literally giggled when I heard the first synth notes. My admiration for Paul and his talent has grown from large to enormous.
J: In the first few seconds I hear the majesty of something like Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” but then the dance pop drums come in and I’m totally taken. Like if Jens Lekman went on a major Robyn jag. Paul’s a goddamn velvet-throated minstrel.
P: Your hearing Prince puts you exactly in the same year as my ears sent me. I heard the sounds of Van Halen’s 1984 synthesizers. You are right about Paul’s voice. I have heard him sing, but never like this. That is what made my admiration for him grow from large to enormous. It might be time for Paul and Caleb Bue to have a talk regarding replacing that Walter fella from Caleb and Walter.
J: 1984 was an important year for culture overall and for me as a little kid. Sure, there was Carl Lewis and the Los Angeles Olympics and Prince and Madonna and Born in the USA, but Mattel also put out their Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars line, which was the ceiling of the Sistene chapel to 8-year old me. The sculpts on those action figures were David with five points of articulation. It was a magical year.
P: Paul does a quick tour of 1984 synth pop in those first couple of notes, and then he’s off to the clubs of 1985 and the birth of Erasure after that. I was going to ask, and I guess I will as you brought up the subject, what Marvel character or characters do you hear in autOaudiO’s cover of your song?
J: Kang the Conqueror. No doubt about it. As a time traveler he is timeless, yet futuristic.
P: Kang is not a bad metaphor for Paul’s persona as autOaudiO. His projects released under this name range from ’70s ambient to ’80s dance clubs to ’90s video game soundtracks to the glitch and IDM of the earliest part of this new century and the more recent, well, e-jams.
P: In your video for the album version of “Cardinal Points,” you feature the art of Giorgio de Chirico, the Dadaists, and the Surrealists. I have overlaid this BoW release of the song over top of the video. They work really well together, though this latest iteration of the song is about a minute longer than the video. If you were to make a song for the autOaudiO “Cardinal Points,” would you stay with these artists?
J: I don’t think so – I think Paul pulls it in another direction. While the feel is from 1984, it’s not the “White Lines” of Basquiat and Keith Haring. Maybe photography? I need to consult some Art in America back issues . . .
A: Cindy Sherman maybe.
J: Cindy Sherman it is. Nice pull!
A: While you guys were away I drew Paul as Cardinal Points, the synth-playing cat (age undetermined)
P: That is a wonderful drawing. As we established at the top and as we now see illustrated, “Cardinal Points” is a middle-aged cat who has seen life as a bedroom, er . . . living room recording, an a cappella jam, a “proper” studio banger, and now a dance club rave up. That’s four of it’s nine lives. What other paths do you think it could walk before finally succumbing to time and fate? John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” has been adopted as a traditional Scottish folk ballad, though sometimes the beat is jacked up and it becomes a linedance stomper. Could you see this in a reincarnation of “Cardinal Points?” It already has Scottish lineage through Pennycook.
J: If “Cardinal Points” were to be reincarnated further, I’d go for the big three: torch song, modal jazz, and mixed choir backed by a large pipe organ. That’s an afternoon for Reuben Taylor, Sophie Dodds and assorted associates.
A: I recently learned that Toots and the Maytals did a fantastic rendition of Country Roads and I’d like something like that for one of Cardinal Points future lives
P: Wait. Are we combining . . .
A: Ska-tish music. Yes.
P: Wow. Jon. You have an assignment. I think that we are learning a lot about the versatility of “Cardinal Points” and its potential. Paul really did the world a favor here. For the next global pandemic, instead of having 32 renditions of Casey Ruff’s “You Don’t Bother Me” compiled to support the venues along Ballard Avenue, we can have 32 glorious covers of “Cardinal Points.”
J: “You Don’t Bother Me” is a song for the people, a highly relatable song about friendship and drinking and deep human connection. “Cardinal Points” is something else. A love song dreaming about itself? A dream in love with the afternoon? The lustful drive to touch the hem of the divine? But Paul transcends the obscurantism I saddled the song with and turns it into a joyous, erotic ascent into the rafters. Studio 54 for the Paris Review set.