Dan
Zimmerman
Cosmic
Patriot (Sounds Familyre)
"If you haven’t heard Dan Zimmerman’s
voice before, it IS your first impression of his music. A
rich, distinctive, roasted baritone somewhere in between Lee
Hazelwood, Bobby Womack, and early Tom Waits, his voice is
all character, with nothing pretended or imposed. Dan’s
been singing since he picked up the guitar in 1957, and his
resonance is pure experience. A Methodist preacher’s
kid turned ‘60s art-school van-gypsy married by a swami,
turned Northwestern mountain-man singing at lunch-hour for
fellow workers at a tree-packing plant…what an arc!
And that’s just the groundwork.
COSMIC PATRIOT is a timeless pop balancing
act between a stormy middle-earth apocalypse and something
effortless, intimate, and unhurried. The writing, the band,
the recording – there’s complexity, darkness,
and intensity, but it’s all so snug and woven and of-a-piece.
It’s amazing how disarming a song that starts off with
the battle cry, “Prepare for war, total war…”
ends up being. Just as the listener finishes taking in the
meaning of that chilling lyric, the song glides into a rousing
homefires sing-along. Therein is the push-me-pull-me quality
that exists throughout. Take “Everyday In My Heart,”
which could easily be Johnny Cash covering the Cascades “Listen
To The Rhythm Of The Falling Rain.” The clouds form
and part, the raindrops and sunshine are interchangeable,
and you couldn’t get the tune out of your head if you
wanted. Same goes double for the warm, smirky Roy Orbison
hook of “Lonely Way.”
Zimmerman has moved through life with a deeply
purposeful wanderlust which permeates every note of his music.
There’s a spirit to it, a soul to it, a body to it;
there’s always something steadily in motion and growing
in this picture. Songs like “Secret Name,” “Steady
Plodder,” and “Trailing Clouds Of Glory”
are spirituals. “The Thing Itself” is a beautifully
slow, existential tweed-amp explosion, pulling good and hard
on the band’s hidden Philly/South Jersey psych roots.
Then, right at the core of the record is “Silence Is
A Golden Mountain,” clattering and glissing into wood
glue. Like Tim Hardin’s “If I Were A Carpenter.”
Or Bruce Cockburn’s “Lord Of The Starfields.”
Or Chris Smither’s “Small Revelations.”
COSMIC PATRIOT captures the band and
the man perfectly—everything fits. The boots are well-worn
and comfortable; the tremolo pulses right when you need it,
and the string section rises to answer its own questions.
This could have been a classic Leonard Cohen session. Think
about when you first found all those Scott Walker records,
all those R. Stevie Moore tapes. There’s a personality
completely preserved in its own space, an old friend you knew
nothing about. Dig in…."
-Glen Galloway, 2009
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