One of the more unique collaborations that’s cropped up so far this year is NOT ON THE MAP, the forthcoming project from Americana songwriters Howe Gelb and Pieta Brown alongside the ever-innovative Colorist Orchestra. Anchoring both artists’ distinct musical inputs is the Belgian avant garde collective, adding a unique percussive flavor to their new single “Counting On”—including a table of various vessels filled with water being struck by mallets—with an otherwise traditional string accompaniment. There’s something sinister about the strings-and-xylophone combo, with Gelb’s near-Cohen-like croon abetting the mood.
“We made a rough demo that contained the structure and chords for a song,” the Orchestra shares. “We met with Howe for a live recording, where we tried out some song ideas. Howe improvised some lyrics and melodies on the track that would become ‘Counting On.’ The double feeling in the parlando verses leaves a lot of room for the cinematic lines of the strings. All the themes in the song seem to illustrate the different chapters in Howe’s story. The beat and bass are very basic, a contrast that we liked with the finer colors in the melodic arrangement.”
“That was another one where I would just check in with Pieta, say ‘Hey, you got any ideas for me?’” Gelb adds. “And she said immigration or migrants, and I went OK I’ll give it a shot. And I started randomly coming up with four different scenes in history, the idea being that in each scene you had two people falling in love—you had a couple—and they were surrounded by the extremes of calamity, whether it was war or some harsh form of migration. The first verse was about of course the original people here and how they were treated when the Europeans came over, what we call the Indian Wars. The second verse was a couple of lovers that all the sudden were surrounded by the Nazi era in Europe, and the third one was the Arab Spring and how two individuals were caught up in all that, it became swirling around them, and the final one was the long trek when 5,000 folks were fleeing South America and coming up only to be stopped at the border.”
He continues, “These are just random things that pop into my head where I was just trying to focus in on two people that were falling in love, but this is what they had to deal with. It’s really hard to listen to the details inside each verse, I’m practically whispering and babbling and just talking in tongues, just going off on what it is I think I’m seeing. It’s not very coherent, but the chorus basically sums it up each time, saying all those people are counting on everything we’ve already counted on.”
Watch a performance video of the track below.
