A New Review of LOVE'S RIVER

This beautiful review by my longtime comrade in the Arts, Douglas Stalker, was written in the summer of 2020. Its publication was delayed because, unbeknownst to us,  the journal we had submitted it to was not currently publishing. Now that we're aware of that, I'm trying to circulate the review as widely as possible.
In Meher Baba's Love, Max Reif 

LOVE'S RIVER
a CD by Max Reif

produced by Cliff Hackford

review by Douglas Stalker

 

    Max Reif’s new release, Love’s River, is a well of many waters and a caravan of seemingly countless tales. It tells of the soul’s journey through longing, desperation, inquisition, and into fleeting glances of ecstasy on the path to the Beloved.

 

    From the honeymoon of “Sweet Intoxication” to the Jungian-shadowed “dark cellar,” (swept) by “The Humble Cleaner,” Max spins a labyrinthine highway of paradox, humor, and the baptisms of returning to innocence, as he travels back into the arms of his lord, Meher Baba.

 

    I listened many times before stepping out of the limited boxes of my own perception and preference and truly imbibing the tales woven in Max’s words, melodic motifs, and voice. Max sings, not with virtuosic correctness, but with a character voice, born of the “dard” of long suffering, as Baba once described it to Gulmai.

 

    Not unlike his paintings of raw innocence, infused with piercing and sublime metaphors, Max paints an aural landscape that one might see outside the doors of Hafiz’s Tavern, where the naked gypsy dances, sings, rants and raves, waiting to be called inside and poured the real wine.

 

     From the sweet, frolicking violin and honky-tonk piano on “The Humble Cleaner,” to the fluent, articulate, and sometimes soaring electric guitar entrances on the Gujerati Arti (words in English ), the music is filled with nuanced constellations of harmonic counterpoint and flowing intuition.

 

    The solid, pillared bass lines are often juxtaposed with bubbling, bouncy notes  that circle the sure-footed and rhythmic weavings of the drummer, Cliff Hackford—who with musically adept ear has also produced and engineered a sophisticated and whimsical aural collage for Max’s songs.

 

    One of my favorite songs is the title piece, “Love’s River,” which carried me on a boat down the lazy Mississippi on the twilight shift, reminiscing about our mortal past, as simultaneously I could hear the heavenly strains of the Jordan. Such are the free associations many of Max’s songs evoke.

 

The more I listened, the more I found little lotuses of sound and feeling surfacing and appearing on the waters. It seemed as if such enjoyable reflections could go on and on.

 

    One of my favorite lines is from “20th Century Boy”,

 

              “…. and we’d jump into my convertible

and drive all night,

west in freedom, to the morning light.”

 

    Well, who among us hasn’t at some time been in that  “convertible” of wild longing, looking for the source of this Divine and Glorious adventure? Only Love could have thought it up and carried it off—bringing me for my conclusion to another line, one from the song “Mercy’s Ladder”:

 

                          “If God did not send ladders,

                                                How could his name be Mercy?”

*****
LOVE'S RIVER is available as a CD from Sheriar Books in Myrtle Beach, SC
or from Sheriar Books online

The album and each of the individual songs are available digitally at
Amazon.com
(The above link is for the US, it's but also available there in other countries, I believe)

_____________
Here is a Sound Cloud recording of a (free) sample song,
"Sweet Intoxication", that's  mentioned in the review.

 

Back Cover

Inside Liner Notes