CD Review: Salim Nourallah’s Snowing in My Heart

by Mike Orren

Salim Nourallah's latest album is a wondrous study in finding the light in a dark world. That's something the local music community could probably use right now.

“I promise not to make this sad / Nothing here ever lasts.”

I have a terrible confession to make. And it’s especially heretical coming from someone who professes to support and care for the Dallas music scene.

I’ve never really “gotten” Salim Nourallah’s music. (Pausing, waiting for readers to start rolling up copies of the Dallas Observer to fashion into crude torches and begin the lynching of this reviewer.)

I know that on paper I should love his stuff. People whose taste I generally respect and agree with love it. Some of them have questioned my sanity on this point. His production work is a cornerstone of the excellent albums coming out of the likes of Johnny Lloyd Rollins, Jayson Bales and soon the Old 97’s among others.

But Salim’s own albums have never stirred me. Perhaps it was because I thought they were “like those bloody Psalms – so depressing.”

I don’t mind a little sadness in my music – and God knows whistling in the dark is one of my favorite pastimes. But even though I know that the world is “Full of People Who Want To Hurt [Me],” I generally don’t want to be reminded in song.

Until now.

Salim’s new Snowing in My Heart, already available on Itunes and overseas – but criminally unavailable in CD form stateside – has turned me around and then some. It’s not that he’s suddenly gone all-upbeat – it’s that the whistling versus darkness ratio has come into an exhilarating balance.

This is where ELO’s Jeff Lynne meets Leonard Cohen and then pops off for a drink with Elvis Costello. It’s deliciously, darkly uplifting – full of songs that celebrate the fact that the world simultaneously sucks ass and is joyously, terribly worth living in.

And although I’ve always thought that Salim had a definite Ray Davies quality to his vocals, this album expands on that, maintaining the deadpan delivery, while letting the occasional crack in the voice bring a grittier humanity come into the songs. That makes it sound more live, more “real” and fits the tenor of the songs nicely.

This album may be a case of “Physician, heal thyself.” Salim not only provides an album of “struggle, a battle” that still manages to bring joy – he does so with vocals that are simultaneously world-weary and uplifting. The instrumentation is flush and full of Beatlesque (think Sergeant Pepper’s) complexity that is lush without being fussy.

The tone is set with the opening track, “Hang On,” with the soaring chorus exhorting to “Hang on / hang on / hang on / ‘til everything is gone / Hang on / hang on / hang on / Don’t look so sad / hang on … You gotta love this life / even when it has you beat.” Melodically, it's got the swinging juxtaposition of darkness and light found in the best Radiohead tracks.

“So Down,” despite the title, is one of the most pragmatically uplifting songs I’ve ever heard: “i never knew what i had / ‘til it slipped away / i never knew what i had / ‘til the things i loved had been erased/the people in my heart displaced / that’s when i realized that every day we have is a gift / we squander all the lucky years / to draw them in a bath of tears / we cry for ourselves because this world hasn’t given us what we want.”

“The Wicked are Winning” sounds like an unreleased Elvis Costello and the Attractions track that, again, manages to belie its dour title. After all, “Everyone wants to hear something / that makes them happy.”

“Days Disappear” continues the trend, affirming that Salim “never wants to let go of this life, “ or the jangly guitars that surround it. The Ray Davies vocal comparison is most apparent here.

“This Soft Existence” is the only track on the album that feels over-produced to me. It’s a deadpan rumination that could do with a little less echo and a few less harps and handclaps. They all distract from the essence of what is, at heart, a really nice pop song.

“It’s Okay to Be Sad” does what many of the other songs on the album do, albeit less subtly: “Everything’s a struggle / That’s just the way things are.” And then Salim tells perhaps the only lie on the album: “I’ve got nothing to say to ease your pain.”

“Erased,” which is the first of two songs to contain the album’s title line, picks up a synthesized polka-y beat in the verses with a wall of sound chorus that sounds like the best pop songs of the 1980s.

“Miss You” is a heartfelt love song, layered with an electronica drum track. The Kinks influence weighs heavy, but is appropriate to the tune.

“Don’t Be Afraid” is the most straightforward song on the album, with nearly enough twang to pass as alt-country. It brightly urges you to “Let in the light / let the healing begin.” The appropriately deadpan delivery keeps lyrics like “There’s some things I know that we’re all scared of / ….. You face ‘em with love” from coming across as saccharine.

“It’s Lonely When You’re All Alone” is one of my favorite tracks on the disc, pulling together lush instrumentation and pop hooks with upbeat melancholia. It’s the poster child for the rest of the disc, both musically and lyrically, as it wryly twists a rumination on self-image: “If there were any justice in this world I’d be a saint / Put on the highest pedastal / Not covered in house paint.”

“Snowing in My Heart” is the only track that really leaves me cold. Again with the heavy vocal effects that cover Salim’s distinctive voice… And, if there’s any song on the disc that puts me back in mind of my earlier assessments, this is it.

The closing track, “The Terror” puts me in mind of Wilco circa A Ghost is Born and YHF. In fact, during the multilayered cacophony of guitar feedback during the song’s homestretch, I found myself involuntarily chanting “Yankee…Hotel….Foxtrot” in my best faux English bird voice.

In synthesizing the best traits of those whose albums he makes better, on Snowing in My Heart Salim proves that he truly is the epicenter of the Dallas music scene. I hear bits of Rollins, Bales and Rhett Miller in these songs (or maybe vice-versa). Salim sounds like he’s finding peace and joy in life’s miseries. This is an album that will help me do so as well, and for a long time to come.

And now, to re-examine that back catalog...

You can see what I'm listening to on my Last.fm page.

• Staff
• Verified User
• Anonymous