Barzin – Notes To An Absent Lover (2009)

From the shelves

Back in 2009, I wrote that the first listen to ‘Notes To An Absent Lover’ could feel slightly disorienting. Perhaps we subconsciously expected a carbon copy of the excellent ‘My Life In Rooms’ (2006), the album that had put Canadian songwriter Barzin Hosseini — better known simply as Barzin — on the map a few years earlier. When I interviewed him back then, he readily agreed that things were indeed changing: “I too feel that the album has more of a ‘mature’ feel to it. Like most musicians, I always hope that every new album signals some form of growth or evolution. So I hope this album represents an evolution in my musical development. I just try to avoid making the same mistakes I made during my previous albums, and hope that when those are combined with what I’ve learned along the way, the result is something worthwhile”.

The differences are subtle, yet essential. Where Barzin could previously be described as a singer-songwriter with a slowcore inflection — something like Sophia’s quieter moments sprinkled with Sparklehorse and Red House Painters — on ‘Notes To An Absent Lover’, his third full-length release, it’s the songwriter side that clearly takes precedence. The result is an album that smoothed out the rough edges, leaving little room for any post-rock abrasiveness, built instead on composed melodies and an almost whispered vocal delivery.

What hadn’t changed, however, was Barzin’s ability to move the listener. The songs on ‘Notes To An Absent Lover’ arrived almost on tiptoe, sometimes with more of an indie-folk feel, but in the end, through lyrics suspended between melancholy and bitterness, they left a lasting impression; one that still resonates so many years later. Back then, it made me wonder: was this absent lover someone already gone, or someone yet to be met? “These notes are aimed at both. The majority of them are written to someone from my past, but some are written to someone whom I have yet to meet”, Barzin explained. “At the beginning, all that I was concerned about was writing. I wasn’t really thinking about the album or how people would respond to it. But once the idea of an album began to form in my mind, I found myself editing the lyrics, removing more and more emotions from the songs. I think the more I thought about how I wanted to talk about the topic of a break-up, the more I wanted it to be emotionally neutral. I think I was aiming to write from a place that writers such as Leonard Cohen are so good at writing from. They can write about the most heartbreaking topics with such detachment. And I found myself striving to achieve a similar thing. But I don’t think I succeeded in writing from this detached place. I think a lot of emotions still managed to spill into the songs”. They did, and that’s one of the reasons why they feel so bittersweet and heartwrenching.

The other is Barzin’s utter devotion to poetry: “I have such a deep love and respect for poets and poetry. I have been reading and writing poetry for many years now. Reading poetry has exposed me to so many different approaches to writing. It has shaped the way I write. The more I read, the more I understand how it is that I want to express myself. If there is a soul, then I think it speaks through poetry”.

The album may suffer slightly from a certain homogeneity, but at just 36 minutes — and, above all, with such a strong set of songs — it’s a largely insignificant flaw. Some listeners may still prefer ‘My Life In Rooms’ or even one of the later works, but that’s beside the point for Barzin, who writes primarily for himself. “Sometimes writing does seem like a cathartic act”, he said. “Not only is it a way for me to get something out of myself, but it’s also a way for me to control those things in my life that feel out of control. It’s strange how you can feel you have a better grasp on a situation by just sitting down and writing about it. Maybe it’s just an illusion, I am not sure”.

With so much emphasis on the writing act, you can’t help but wonder whether Barzin sees himself as a poet other than a musician: “That’s an interesting question, and my answer might sound a bit odd. I have never felt like a musician. I think my heart is that of a poet. But the irony of it is that I don’t share my poetry with anyone. But I love music immensely. Music is my saviour and my downfall”.