Mexico City - Toby Burke

Mexico City

Toby Burke
Perfect Black Swan Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

Trying to distinguish between Toby Burke’s songs as Horse Stories and those under his own name initially seems pointless. Both distill Burke’s natural gift for songcraft without trying to pull away from each other in any obvious contextual way. Unlike November, November, his 2010 release under the Horse Stories moniker, Mexico City studies Burke’s personal vignettes through a more immediate lens, with each song being captured as opposed to being presented after countless refinements.

To Burke’s credit, this raw approach doesn’t steal much of his songwriting’s mystique. The first minute of ‘Cantina Crawl’ feels out his makeshift studio – an apartment in, you guessed it, Mexico City – before locking into a steady acoustic pick, occasionally haunted by piano, whereby Burke recounts drunken Saturday nights and the working-class weekdays that incite them. Abandoning the studio polish on these tracks feels right, allowing the piano to swell around Burke’s sentiments on ‘Young For Life’ and muddling the percussion on ‘The Great Escape’. Burke’s minimalism remains balanced, even when the rougher production boasts a sweltering closeness that renders ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’ such a claustrophobic wonder.

That’s Burke’s Mexico City, though - a transient lowland where each song’s protagonist plots their daily escape. And judging by the album’s recording, which managed nine songs over the course of nine days, it looks as though Toby Burke survived his key role in the narrative. Don’t let Mexico City’s origins fool you; despite the document’s casual conception, Burke brings his unnerving best to these inspired sad-sack odes.

#9 Album Of 2010: November, November - Horse Stories

November, November

Horse Stories
Perfect Black Swan Records.

Original SCQ Review

It’s difficult to profess what’s so appealing about this sophomore effort because Horse Stories’ Toby Burke doesn’t offer up a single misfire. No ugly guitar-lick or lazy lyrical stanza. The result of a pursuit for perfection, November, November is what survived intensive recordings that sought to strip back every unneeded layer, and as a modern folk record, it’s damned-near flawless.

That isn’t to say it’s perfect. As someone who inherently distrusts anything that settles too easily, too quickly, I’ve often been skeptical of my own admiration for Horse Stories because of its lean, impractically tuneful veneer. Yet Burke never steps foot outside of his own strict songwriting legislature and his discipline pays off handsomely. November, November may not push boundaries or challenge listeners but it isn’t pandering for hits either. A beautifully futile song-cycle that I’ll still sing along to ten, twenty years from now.

Horse Stories (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part IV)

Responsible for the winter-still beauty of November, November, Toby Burke has spent much of 2010 carving out a unique songwriting stance between modern folk and understated rock. From the sound of this interview, Horse Stories has a few more plans in mind for the immediate future - one admittedly far more likely than the other.

SCQ: Every list-lover's favourite question: what are your top albums of 2010? Feel free to include any older yet worthy records you discovered this year.

TB: Damien Jurado "Saint Bartlett", A.A. Bondy "When The Devil's Loose", The National "High Violet", Brad Paisley "Constant Companion"

SCQ: What were you listening to a lot of while recording your excellent album November, November?

TB: It's hard to remember now, the usual stuff probably. A lot of old vinyl - I know that's a cliche, but really, I was. Mainly because I'd just re-settled in the States where I had access to a wide range of reasonably priced records again. So WIllie Nelson (lot of Willie), Dylan, John Prine, random old old blues/folk stuff, that sort of thing. Plus newer things like Magnolia Electric Co, The National, Conor Oberst, Wilco.

SCQ: Be cocky for once in your life: what was the finest thing you did all year? That moment where you actually thought "shit, I nailed that..."?

TB: Oh gosh... I recorded a bunch of new songs in Mexico City recently for a solo record. I was on my own, in an apartment, in a foreign country and I didn't have a lot of time - so not exactly a "controlled" recording environment, it was a tad frantic. But I'm sure there must have been one or two moments when I was listening back to a track and thought that. Then immediately un-thought it, most likely.

SCQ: Effect and Cause: November, November was one of 2010's earliest front-to-back listens, and it remains one of the best. My girlfriend and I sat in the new SCQ office, with boxes everywhere, and listened to it twice through without moving. Okay, your turn: confess a true tale that inspired one of the songs from November, November.

TB: It's really nice to hear about people experiencing my record in that way, because I've had those moments... so thanks a lot for sharing it.
I would confess if I could, but only very rarely does a songwriting inspiration occur to me in such a linear and narrative way. The new ones are more like that, but the batch on November, November aren't. I could point to maybe one blurry little specific thing in each, but it's not very interesting. That's why it becomes a song - hopefully they are interesting!

SCQ: If all the reasonable and implausible ideas in your head came to fruition in 2011, what would they be?

TB: I'll manage to sell more copies of the Mexico City record than stay stored in my shed and maybe I'll finally get that shot at the reserve guard spot for the Los Angeles Lakers.

November, November - Horse Stories (Winter 2010)

November, November

Horse Stories
Perfect Black Swan Records.

SCQ Rating: 85%

Quality songwriters don’t come around as often as we’d like them to. Really, it isn’t about a song they’re pushing or even a particular sound they’re toting so much as a demeanor, a vulnerability that you can relate to. In that respect, choosing to follow a songwriter’s work with any determination is like choosing a friend; you want someone you can share ideals and desires with, and yet someone you don’t entirely understand. Toby Burke, the Los Angeles via Australia-based artist behind Horse Stories, broke the ice for me with ‘Hummingbird’, a gentle folk song so pure and powerful it’s nearly gospel in its ethereal build. If ‘Hummingbird’ hints at the promise of great things, November, November provides proof of those declarations and the beginnings of an assured friendship.

Originating in a windowless garage under Burke’s LA house, these songs have endured three years and countless demos of transformation and refinement, as Horse Stories reinvented his stylistic approach. And as November, November spread track-by-track from my stereo, I kept those details close to heart, hoping no brash guitar or clumsy lyric would interrupt Burke’s patient flow. Luckily – no, incredibly – this album’s trial of refinement has resulted in no such wayward decision; instead, Burke has hewed ten impeccable tracks, founded on acoustic guitar but stretched with bouts of percussion and strings so engaging, their emotional resonance outlasts their economic run-times. The dexterous drumming and finger-picked guitar that announces ‘Standing In the Snow’ sets a bleak scene of two stubborn people, possibly lovers, figuring each other out while the odd electric outburst blows through a frigid breeze. With a harder edge but no less patient is ‘Hole In the Head’, where Burke repeats – as if the impossible has come true – “I made it, I made it,” before a crest of quietly aching guitar-work. Although November, November’s first half, rounded out by the charmingly nostalgic ‘Telephone Message…’, cannot be trumped, the record’s second half nearly succeeds in matching it. Burke’s deliberate pacing on ‘The Weight’ and ‘Believer’ crests with the latter, sturdy and string-laden, before settling confidently upon two soft closures. As ‘Rockinghorse’ pleads for the return of a runaway over antique piano and soft horn, ‘The TV’ seemingly sums up all of November, November’s tasteful markers – subtle vocal echoes, pastoral acoustics, acute moments of drama – in its stirring, choral refrain.

To open one’s album with a song as instantly loveable as ‘Hummingbird’ is a no-brainer; what separates Burke from the many one-hit troubadours, however, is that November, November’s nine subsequent tracks are as good, if not better. Between the lyrics and in Burke’s slight twang, I can’t help but hear elements of Ryan Adams, moody but confessional, touching these songs as if passing the torch from one great songwriter to another. In Horse Stories lies a worthy successor to the folk crown, no doubt, as well as a friend you never knew you had.