The Red Hot Organization’s new TRANSA project may have started small, but it was probably always going to end as something epic. Intended as a “spiritual journey celebrating trans people” it features over 100 artists coming forward with new material (including the first new work from Sade in many years) and new interpretations. For a cover of Belle and Sebastian’s “Get Me Away from Here I Am Dying,” Julien Baker has assembled a genre and ocean-spanning group featuring Calvin Lauber, Northern Irish folk artist Soak and Alaskan singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson.
The original was a very personal, and local, piece of work. A tune about a well-intentioned and good-natured singer-songwriter struggling to write a song to banish their ennui. Their base is a “tenement,” Glasgow’s less sophisticated answer to an American city townhouse. Perhaps the red sandstone building is close to the college where the band came together, on a groundbreaking course to nurture a new generation of Scottish musical stars. It sounds jaunty and jangly, entirely typical of Belle and Sebastian’s early work. Serious, but not wearing it heavily. It does not take a detective to work out who the protagonist was, and where their inspiration came from. It has universality, but also place and time.
Baker is very familiar with Belle and Sebastian’s work, having toured with them as an opening act. They may have grown up several years and many miles apart but their musical tastes, personal self-doubt and the role of Christianity in fuelling their personal journey means that Baker has an innate sense of the material. However, she takes the piece to a different place. Her self-doubt sometimes strays into darker territory than the original. She and her collaborators are less optimistic about the local world they inhabit, and the wider environment as a whole. The mix is dense and layered, and does not comfort the listener that the band can banish the bad feelings with an upbeat tune. The pace is faster and less well-controlled. As a metaphor for the journey, spiritual or otherwise, that trans people have to take to affirm their place in the world, it is perfectly judged.
