Timber
R.I.P. Taylor Kirk
Not through any decided-upon tenet or conscious practice, but likely more from the overwhelming amount of ambient input plus often crippling laziness, I rarely form any kind of parasocial relationship with public figures. I’m not really curious about the day to day lives of the famous. I spend vast amounts time consuming the cultural artifacts they were involved in creating, but rarely research what lies behind them, let alone who they are dating or what brand of kombucha they sponsor. As such it is rare for news of someone passing to elicit more than momentary curiosity. But the news of Taylor Kirk’s untimely (?) death struck a chord that continues to resonate.
As with an embarrassing amount of art that ends up taking a place in the upper tier of my likes and loves, my initial encounter with Timber Timbre was somewhat accidental. It came while visiting a friend, Marc L., in Ottawa one weekend in April of 2008 (ahead of attending a Stars of the Lid show in Montreal, if memory serves). While one of the folks I was traveling with was working his way through a bout of food poisoning, Marc suggested we escape the sounds of retching and take a jaunt over The Blacksheep Inn, a somewhat legendary music venue in Wakefield, QC, about half an hour from Ottawa.
From the name of the venue and the hushed tones most used when speaking it, I expected some kind of English manor with stuffed wingback chairs and sheepdogs resting near end tables used to rest glasses of brandy or port. Instead the Inn is a fairly modest structure with a slightly-higher-class-than-dive-bar vibe in the actual show space.
Wakefield is a small arts-forward community of under 3000 souls on the bank of the Gatineau River. As it turned out the geography was a perfect place to encounter a moody gothic folk fellow at the start of his career. As he settled into his chair in the corner of the bar the lights dimmed leaving only the candles on each table to illuminate the crowd. Kirk played a solo set with a projection of the original black and white 1922 Nosferatu behind him. It was mesmerizing. It culminated with a heavy feedback note and Kirk lifting and dropping his guitar amp, loudly activating the reverb coils to great effect.
He was yet to widely release his self-titled album on Arts & Crafts, but I did grab a now treasured copy of Medicinals, a CD-R release he brought to sell.
When that “debut” did drop a year later it did not disappoint. It certainly captured the spooky and darkly devotional aspect of his performance. (Though I still have not dived deeply into his bio, Kirk’s origins in largely Mormon part of rural Ontario contributed to his bent approach to religiosity and mysticism).
The path he pursued continued to evolve from the stark, sepia tones of his first work to something more panoramic but no more brightly lit. It was as though, as his view of the world expanded, he recognized the darkness that could blanket almost everything. It should be said that this was not necessarily the art of despair. There is a kind of gallows humour that runs through the song, a wink that says things may be pretty bad, but we can still have fun with it.
The shift towards a fuller instrumental backing took a little while to get used to. It is another one of my tendencies to want to maintain a kind of consistency of tone for my preferred artistic pursuits, but as always happens I gradually see that the growth is not a deviation but a deepening of something I already treasured. As such, by the time Sincerely, Future Pollution came out in 2017, with its inky slinky synthesizer sounds, I was fully back on board.
I got to see Timber Timbre one more time a few years ago, here in my hometown. It wasn’t as transformative as the first time, of course, because how could it be. But it was still something. I was / am still wrapping my heads around Lovage, the last full album that was released back in 2023, but I’m sure that will occupy a welcome space in my pantheon eventually.
The news of his passing was appropriately cryptic. Age 44. Suddenly. And nearly two weeks prior to any kind of public acknowledgment of its occurrence. I don’t think I’ll do any further digging into details. Internet sleuthing is not my thing. The only bit of postscript content I found that intrigues is a series of digital EPs called “Interview” on one of the Bandcamp pages. They really don’t resemble what one would associate with his usual sound, mostly featuring Kirk on bass. They seem to be improvisations captured live at a variety of venues, the most recent dating from February of this year. Perhaps that might end up being the door left open to finding out more… at least a new encounter in the darkness.