There’s always been something fundamentally dreamy about the sound of a steel guitar; the silvery gleam of its tone, the graceful swoon as it slides from one note to the next. It’s that dreaminess that makes it such a useful and versatile instrument for the skilled songwriter, able to evoke all sorts of emotions depending on the music and the context.
Mid-century country artists made use of the steel guitar, whether to show a honky-tonk singer’s sensitive side or to lend its lush, honeyed warble to a countrypolitan confection. It shows up on “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, as well, fluttering in the background like a heartsick moth. Ry Cooder used the slide guitar, a close cousin, throughout his discography, nowhere better than on the soundtrack to Paris, Texas, where it poignantly evoked the beautiful lonesome landscapes
of Wim Wender’s masterpiece. Even ambient music has room for the instrument; the second half of Brian Eno’s Apollo uses the gentle peal of Daniel Lanois’ steel guitar to make the yawning cosmos feel reassuringly earthbound.
Jesse Cafiero – Sonic Mastermind of Split Screens
All of this brings us to “Back Again”, a new song by Split Screens, the solo project of Bay Area musician Jesse Cafiero. The first single off of his new EP Everyday Static, “Back Again” makes prominent use of the lap steel, with a soaring, ascending guitar figure serving as the song’s primary (and best) hook. Not that that’s the only pleasure to be found here–far from it. Over acoustic strumming and twinkling electric keyboards, Cafiero sings in a voice that’s weary yet warm, offering a
return to what once was. “Follow me back again,” he sings in the chorus; earlier, he promises that “you’re not too far from the love you had”, and he sounds both comforting and just a little bit desperate.
In the lineage of steel/slide guitar songs, “Back Again”’s closest comparison is “Fade Into You,” Mazzy Star’s twilit ode to intimacy. Like that song, “Back Again” builds on a folky strum and turns it into a psychedelic swirl, guitars shapeshifting like wisps of clouds in the sky. But “Fade Into You,” dusky as it may be, is still a straightforward love song; “Back Again” is more ambiguous. As much as Cafiero wants to go back to the way things were, the song’s autumnal atmosphere and bittersweet tone tell us that a happy ending is very much in doubt. But who needs a happy ending when you have that hook? It does everything I talked about in that second paragraph up there: it’s sensitive yet lush, its prettiness making the heartbreak a little easier to take. In its sound, it summons a wide-open landscape, but it has a cozy warmth to it that makes that landscape feel less foreboding and more welcoming. Most of all, though, it makes us think, even just for a second, that you can follow Cafiero back, that you can find the love you had again, that you can ride off into the sunset with your head on your lover’s shoulder. And even if you can’t, doesn’t it feel good to dream?
The new Split Screens EP,Everyday Static, will be available on October, 11.
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