The June Carriers - Equanimity (2024)

Youngbloods opens its 2024 programming by introducing The June Carriers project by Portuguese songwriter Francisco Silva aka Old Jerusalem. The full length album Equanimity is a departure from his prolific past, turning to open-ended guitar works that are warm in tone, measured in pace, and ponderous in structure. Equanimity casts a series of aural still lifes that reflect the wisdom (and namesake) borrowed from an ancient 10th century collection of Zen riddles. Silva points to one in particular: a pilgrim is asked what the purpose of his pilgrimage is, to which he claims he does not know, he is merely following the wind. Silva, finding himself in similar circumstances, found inspiration in the riddle’s conclusion that not knowing is most intimate.

Based in the northern coastal city of Porto, Silva has spent his career recording under the alias Old Jerusalem-a nod to the concluding work from Will Oldham’s (Bonnie Prince Billy) 1995 album Viva Last Blues. Silva’s impressive collection of 9 full-length albums are cemented across a decade of vibrant Iberian folk rock, collaborating with local indie labels Bor Land, Rastilho Records, and Pad alongside like-minded players including Paulo Miranda, Alla Polacca, and Peter Broderick. As Old Jerusalem, Silva’s recordings are vivid, lyrical, and poetic, balancing similarities with Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, M. Ward, and Mark Oliver Everett, while sonically his recordings are contoured by earnestness and a sense of foreign nostalgia.

Under his newly minted The June Carriers alias, Silva’s music is comparatively more abstract, spinning off from the stylistic clarity of his hitherto main creative endeavors into a rolling collection of meditative instrumentals. Equanimity was born in the still moments while producing a commissioned work that incidentally reacquainted Silva with his electric guitar. Experiments in repetition and phrase manipulation snowballed into what felt to be a tangible body of precipitate pieces; a writing process Silva likens to idly drawing or following the wind. Instinctively, and without a specific end goal, Silva sent the pieces to be mastered by Kramer (famed record producer, audio engineer, Shimmy-Disc label owner, and legend of New York City’s “downtown scene” of the 1980s) who encouraged him to explore organizing his works into a cohesive, publically released presentation. Silva took these words to heart, sequencing his vignettes to resemble a time capsule of free-roaming, untethered creations.

Stylistically , Equanimity inspires visual apparitions and open-ended story telling amidst a blend of staccato-led rhythms and waves of embracing chords, reminiscent of the Atlantic rolling along Porto’s western shores. Shades of Americana and traditional Portuguese folk stand alongside whispering recollections of endless afternoons and warm days. Compositionally Equanimity stands atop individual snapshots of Silva in an unencumbered mode of creation, culminating and blooming into the intimate freedom of being unburdened. In this zen state of unknowing, we effortlessly become both the observer and the agent. Only then can the album find its conclusion, where enlightenment feels less fleeting.