Reviews Thanks to that little fucker Cupid, we have a popular songbook rather than a popular song pamphlet. The romance wringer that the cherub runs his victims through stokes songwriters’ imaginations like little else. It’s too bad so much mawkish sentimentality and cliché ensues. But when the blissed-out few hit love song pay dirt, passion gets a soundtrack. Two recent regional releases – Band of Horses’ Infinite Arms and the Love Language’s Libraries — personify what can go right, or so terribly wrong, when songwriters tackle The Theme. The third record from S.C.-based Band of Horses serves as a cautionary song-gonewrong tale, with leader Ben Bridwell in the role of Icarus. The Sub Pop-nurtured band with the expanding fan-base signed to Columbia last year, but Bridwell insisted on creative control and agreed to finance the record himself to guarantee it. Recording stints in Asheville’s Echo Mountain, Muscle Shoals and Hollywood followed, but most telling was the departure early on of producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill, The Shins), who helped craft the dynamic sonic range on 2006’s Everything All the Time and 2007’s Cease to Begin. Ek’s cavernous sound is mostly absent here, with the equivalent of a soft-rock throw pillow in its place. It’s meant to convey intimacy, but instead reveals soporific songwriting that cannot hide — as Ek’s soft-loud equation did – the abundant weak spots in Bridwell’s narratives. Opener “Factory” signals a new direction with syrupy strings and Wall of Sound drumbeats over a lazy summer day’s melody, and the story laments band-on-tour
Band of Horses
By Inés Fonseca
loneliness. But comparing a loved one to a snack machine candy bar is an excruciating harbinger of the “Bartles & Jaymes” choruscum-product placement in disc-ender “Neighbor,” and all the cringe-couplets in between. Then there’s all the tepid lovelorn fodder like “Blue Beard,” “On My Way Back Home” and the title track, which lack any of the elemental dynamics you’d expect to mirror the highs and lows of love. The worst offender is “Evening Kitchen” (written by Asheville’s Tyler Ramsey), whose harmonies are so schmaltzy you’ll yearn for the hard-charging excitement those late-night Classic Soft Rock infomercials offer. The pace rallies toward the end of the record, but trying to rekindle the romance is pointless. Bridwell was never going to be mistaken for Stephin Merritt or John Darnielle anyway, but before this record the dramatic production kept your mind off how threadbare his narratives could be. Sadly, Infinite Arms turns out to be that dude at the bar trying to convince everyone that his heartache is unique, though each retelling only points to its banality. Stu McLamb makes no claims to uniqueness on Libraries, The Love Language’s second release and first for Merge. On the contrary, the Raleigh band’s frontman/ everyman relies to such a degree on love’s lingua franca — courtship, cad-ship, passion, forsaken hearts, etc. — that it serves first to remind us that everybody suffers these emotional storms. So, over the course of 10 heart-on-sleeve songs: lilacs bloom, fools rush in, lovers’ hearts beat like humming birds, and autumn leaves signal star-crossed romances gone to dust. McLamb uses this familiar,
candy bar-free imagery to embrace — wholeheartedly — “days in love” nostalgia, adding his own tales to a universal legacy. He does much the same musically. McLamb may work with a broader and clearer-sounding palette here than on his home-recorded eponymous debut, but the aesthetic is unchanged. McLamb calls on a library of the tried-and-true – Roy Orbison yearning (“Blue Angel”), Otis Redding desperation (“This Blood Is Our Own”), Big Star craftsmanship (“Summer Dust”), Ray Davies wit (“Anthophobia”), and Phil Spector textures (everywhere) – to craft songs whose familiarity invites fellowship. Like Infinite Arms, Libraries opens with a rush of swooning strings and mile-deep Wall of Sound layers on “Pedals.” But where Horses’ “Factory” reads like dilettante dabbling, here it feels absolutely necessary; McLamb is so committed to his conceit that there is no other way the song could plausibly unfold. This isn’t slavish Golden Oldie fundamentalism, though. McLamb’s shared musical history extends into the modern era: Beach Boys’ harmonies may adorn the outro to “Horophones,” but it’s the rocket-launch feedback that sends the song into orbit; the textures of “Wilmont” may recall Spector, but the song begins in a vintage 90s lo-fi haze. Hell, the epic guitars bridge on “Pedals” sounds like something Ek might produce. Libraries works because it embraces the fundamental DNA of pop music: the addictive hooks and melodies that rock’s earliest fans heard through tinny transistor radios, and narrative themes that flew with Cupid’s first arrows. Together, they remind us that wellcrafted love songs never lose currency. shuf8
The Love Language
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Top: Photo by Christopher Wilson Bottom: Photo by Jason Arthurs