No Wish to Reminisce
This review is part of a series in which I review Neal’s solo records one by one chronologically, and chat with various friends and bandmates who were part of the making of each record.
The shimmering 2006 release on Fargo Records, No Wish to Reminisce, is one of the most impressive bodies of work Neal Casal released, with dramatic flourishes and layers of sound effects offering revelations anew with each listen.
Neal had made several records in California by now, but found himself living back east again. He headed up to Studio .45 in Connecticut with Dan Fadel and Jeff Hill to record with Michael Deming, producer of Beachwood Sparks, Lilys, and others contemporaries Neal had started to influence and emulate, an interconnected sonic exchange, to be sure. Neal sought out Deming as a master of a sound that would be “less rootsy and have a more psychedelic sound with a classic pop aesthetic and a dreamlike quality.” No doubt Neal was hanging out with the Beachwood dudes and trading record recommendations while taking notes on their production and personnel.
No Wish is another real turning point, signifying the point in Neal’s career where he’d become quite established with a hearty resume of various types of projects. Neal had been busy the last few years touring with Beachwood Sparks, Shannon McNally, and making records with Dan and Jeff as Hazy Malaze. He was ready to dig his heels in and spend a good long time on a record, and would continue to work this way for the rest of his solo career.
Several records in, with a long gap but plenty of endeavors since Anytime Tomorrow, Neal got back in the studio ready to shake things up. He broke out of the bubble of playing with the usual suspects, bringing Hazy Malaze bandmates Dan Fadel and Jeff Hill to anchor the rhythm section, who would continue to enrich the sound on the remainder of Neal’s solo work.
Neal also recognized the significance of this album, a departure from the acoustic-based, stripped-down sound his base had come to expect. With the momentum that came from defending “Oceanview” from Anytime Tomorrow, Neal himself described No Wish as “13 Oceanviews.” This is Neal’s real maximalist effort – a collection of songs he described as “the best, most uniform group of songs that I have ever written.”
According to Gary Waldman, Neal’s lifelong friend and manager, “When you hear The Sun Rises Here and Anytime Tomorrow, they’re both records that we loved, but they were made very quickly. And Neal worked great very quickly because he was so good. But he always wanted the chance to spend a lot of time doing overdubs. He decided to record with Michael, who was a guy who is very “let’s layer everything,” so you can hear that on the record. After Jeff and Dan left, it was probably not more than four or five days that Neal stayed there. And he camped out in the recording room, next to the amps and drum stand. He had a camping mattress. There’s a picture in the photo book coming out in October, where he was living. Just a mattress and a blanket and a couple of books.“
“I didn’t want to build the songs around an acoustic guitar. That changed a lot. I wanted a lot of reverb, echo and a psychedelic sound. And I wanted real string arrangements instead of keyboard sounds. I wanted to change everything and really surprise people. It wasn’t supposed to be a typical songwriter album again.”
Neal Casal, to Gaesteliste, 2006
Each song on No Wish is incredibly strong – they can stand on their own, even without the multi-layered production and special effects – as you can hear on All Directions, a companion-piece to No Wish, consisting of demos of many of the songs recorded at home or live, as well as a few fantastic covers like Ted Quinn’s “Tar Beach” and Beachwood Sparks’s “The Reminder.” If you haven’t heard this compilation, I really urge you to get your hands on it. Neal’s voice on some of these demos is really killer, particurly “Sundowntown;” and the live version of “Freeway to the Canyon” gives me a feeling that hasn’t changed since I first heard it… fourteen years ago now.
Of No Wish, Gary said,
He was really, really proud of the string arrangement that Michael Deming wrote. I wasn’t there when the strings were recorded, but Neal was so excited about the strings that he got in his truck and drove down to my apartment in the city. And we sat out front of my apartment, parked in his truck, listening to it over and over again. We were really excited, the roadmap for some of the songs would be, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. I think Neal wanted to make an album with that kind of scope and broad, layered sound that Phil Spector had done when he mixed that record.
I think Grand Island particularly is very special. I love Sleeping Pills in Stereo too. Normally he would put his favorite songs up upfront. Not always – because Too Much to Ask is the last song on Anytime Tomorrow, and that was one of his favorite recordings that he ever made. But You Don’t See Me Crying, Grand Island, and Travelling After Dark, are really great Neal songs. I think it’s an important record in his catalog.
Neal was really proud of this record and these songs. He liked that he had this opportunity to spend a few weeks doing overdubs because a lot of the times we had very small budgets and limited time. We were lucky enough to work with good people and great musicians and that why The Sun Rises Here and Anytime tomorrow are really great, but they were done very quickly. You just had to make decisions and move on. And on this record, he could say “All I’m going to do today is guitar overdubs on one song, and then I’m going to try this pedal and I’m going to try that pedal. And what does it sound like if we put the the amp speaker in a bathroom with a microphone four feet away?” He got to do a lot of experimenting. And I think that was really important. And he was great. I mean, Neal could make a record really fast or he could spend months and months and months laboring over little things.
Gary Waldman, October 2020
Truly, both types of records Neal made sounded fantastic. No Wish holds a special place in my own heart, spent a lot of years driving through canyons listening to this record, never ever skipping a track. It starts on such a high note, then leaves you completely devastated, in the best way. This one’s ridden a lot of roads with me. I do believe this is the best collection by volume of Neal’s most unforgettable tracks.
Update: October 29, 2020 – added photos from Jeff Hill
