(New West)
For me, Old 97's are on a level with Radiohead, Pavement, and the Magnetic Fields as just about the best rock band to emerge in the '90s (and yes, I am aware Stephin Merritt would oppose his characterization as being part of a "rock band"). Heartfelt, angry, country-tinged romanticists, these Texas boys have all the sky-gazing conviction of purest, basest '50s rock & roll, all the crazed abandon of the Replacements, and all the detailed storytelling prowess of the Kinks or Neil Young. Rhett Miller's heartbreak is as real and vividly expressed as Smokey Robinson's, his put-upon wit as sharp as Neil Tennant's. They are, in short, everything you ought to want. And in 2010, they are starting to come off as tired.
It hurts me to say some of this about a band I admire so deeply, a band I've plugged incessantly for years, a band whose records I want everyone to buy, this one included, just so they'll know people care. Let me express quickly that they have not released a bad album here; if I was unfamiliar with their older work, I might actually love it. Their arrangements, writing, and performances are as tight as ever, if maybe a bit less impassioned. And these guys are S-M-A-R-T, I'd argue as smart as any of the other three I named in the first line as their '90s equals, and in my opinion smarter than at least one of them (which I won't name). Any sound or quirk or ambiguity you hear in the emotion or structure of a record, they probably put there on purpose. If they sound weary, it's likely because they mean to. But I'm going to risk coming off like an asshole and give my version of why I feel they're losing me a bit.
Old 97's are an exception to a lot of rules. They were the best band in their given subgenre but they did not turn out to be the most successful, or even widely successful at all, remaining a just-under-the-radar cult band that, in the pre-Internet days, would've been on a level of national acclaim and public indifference with the Replacements; and in the pre-fanzine world, on a level of complete unjust anonymity with Big Star. Most importantly, they've spent most of their career as an indie rock band but recorded their three best albums for a major label, Elektra, which signed them in the heat of a curious notion that Alt-Country was destined to become the next Grunge.
The albums before the Elektra contract -- Hitchhike to Rhome and Wreck Your Life -- have a number of classics, as do the albums since: Drag It Up, Blame It on Gravity (a mood piece I spent a lot of time defending), and now The Grand Theatre, Volume One, first half of a projected double. But the grand statements come in larger sizes on the three major LPs: Too Far to Care (raw, youthful, manic depressive), Fight Songs (confident, alternative, manic depressive), and Satellite Rides (grandly written, power poppy, manic depressive). The Elektra albums plotted the band on a gradual trend from drunken-on-late-night-possibilities Texas twang to expertly crafted, multilayered, gently emotional pop music. Most importantly, there's something imperceptibly wonderful about listening to those three records; they're alive, evocative, and full of gifts.
The chief problem with Old 97's in their post-major period has seemingly been a reluctance to give in to evolution; each of the first five albums was markedly different than everything before it, showing off growth and experimentation. As performers, the 97's still seem like kings; few reports from their concerts are not ecstastic. As songwriters, Rhett plus his gifted cohorts (Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea, Phillip Peeples) have never stopped bringing it; Drag It Up and BIOG only felt like letdowns for what seemed like a tiresome insistency about the idea of "going back" to the band's roots and "recapturing" the intensity of Too Far to Care. A central problem I can't imagine these guys aren't aware of is that "recapturing" anything is diametrically opposed to what works in rock & roll.
So it is with Grand Theatre: advance publicity hypes the ambition to rechannel The Urgency of classic Old 97's, all the same stuff advance publicity hyped last time. Critical reviews have it as the best thing they've done it years, just like reviews last time (when do these "years" begin and end, one wonders?), and cultists decry that it's not country enough, which is what they've been prattling on uselessly about since 1999. Listening to the album offers an experience that none of these reactions suggest: familiarity. The songs are Old 97's songs, their composition and production vividly tailored to generate memories of (or ape) this or that classic of their catalog, but barely any of them sound new. The ones that do seem suggestive, much like the best songs on BIOG and especially Drag It Up, of a capability for stronger material that the band still possesses but that they're reluctant, for whatever reason, to exploit, too determined to (or stuck on?) being what people what them to be, and not necessarily pulling that off either. The record becomes a compromise that will please few people who actually love the band, and which I'm reluctant to believe pleases the band either.
The economy for a rock band approaching the start of its third decade being what it is, I'm worried that they've grown afraid of taking risks; I'd have expected they were too smart to fall into that, but I'd have expected the same of lots of bands it's happened to. Much of the new album sounds like a set of examples of what they believe Old 97's are "supposed" to sound like. "The Magician" is a middle-tier song but it's made up and flaunted like it's "If My Heart Was a Car," which crushes it under the weight of trying too hard. The enthusiastic manufactured-show-stopper "A State of Texas," which is a dead ringer for "Timebomb," is a catalog of alt-country clichés: "I'm living in a state of Texas / And Texas lives in me."
There's nothing actually wrong with sticking to a signature sound; Rhett has two excellent songs here, his best in some time, that are instant classics and both could be on any prior Old 97's full-length. "Let the Whisky Take the Reins" is delicate, instantaneously affecting lonesome country -- hoarsely sung and self-deprecating but convincingly outlaw: the lament of the badass male hero who knows he's fucked up. Nearly as strong: "The Beauty Marks," a hushed, trippy widescreen drama that could've fit on the soundtrack to The Last Picture Show. Both songs are whispered, as fragile as the best song of the band's post-major period, "In the Satellite Rides a Star." The key is that these are unforced; they don't tread new ground for the group, but they feel natural and organic.
It's a mistake to overlook the willingness to expand that still remains here. Unfortunately, sometimes the band's forward pole-vaults lead them in a direction that simply doesn't suit them. This record's sole absolute dud is the lusty stalker-shuffle "The Dance Class," which comes off like a really bad musical number wedged into the movie Talk to Her. Other problems could have been repaired neatly with a few extra rewrites (not rehearsals, which they still don't need): "Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You)" finds the band doing a respectable job of cutting loose on the pop sound, but the lyrics are terrible ("I was dumb as a rock / I could not read a clock"), thus short-circuiting part of the appeal of their finest moments. The nearly great "Please Hold On While the Train Is Moving" opens as routine road-movie music then falls into a delightfully tricky, memorable Eddie Cochran-quoting interlude that leaves the rest of the song far behind, gasping for air.
As ever, bassist and secondary vocalist Murry Hammond can be counted on as a consistent joy, whatever the rest of a given album is like. "You Were Born to Be in Battle" is a surprisingly convincing Johnny Cash imitation, marred only by a rote Tex-Mex arrangement lacking the emotional depth of Hammond's best cuts. But (not for the first time), he also contributes the highlight of Volume One in the form of "You Smoke Too Much." The most distinctly "New" Old 97's track in some time, this slice of Lovin' Spoonful-ish pop heaven with twang is where I wish this band would let themselves go. Not that they'll ever read this, but please guys, more like this.
None of the other songs will surprise the longtime fan. The title track is a classic Rhett Miller singalong, in the vaguely menacing vein of "The New Kid," awkwardly pastiched with the band's mid-'90s sound. "Champaign, Illinois" is a (credited) Bob Dylan rewrite that will please alt-country obsessives. And "Love Is What You Are" is well-sung but boring balladry in the fashion of Miller's solo work. All of these songs came from the same sessions, and those produced much of what will be released as Vol. 2, with the result that it's difficult to discern what that record will be like. The band initially wanted a double album with twenty-odd tracks but thought better of it. Some are murmuring that such a configuration would have helped these songs, but I'm not so sure. The weakest cuts don't bother me so much as the mediocre ones like "A State of Texas," "Love Is What You Are," and "The Magician," and their problems are self-contained enough that even the mighty force of recontextualization wouldn't help them, unless -- I hasten to add -- I were a new fan unfamiliar with Too Far to Care, which might make the songs sound fresher.
The Grand Theatre, Vol. 2, despite the sequel-syndrome its title evokes, will be a crucial Old 97's record for me, as it's probably the one that will decide for me if I'm still going to follow their new records as devotedly as I have been. I wonder currently if the time's finally passed that they'll really be able to put out an artistically triumphant, impressive LP. It's been almost ten years, but songs like "You Smoke Too Much" and "The Beauty Marks" give me hope that these four heroes have more yet to prove to us, and that they've still got the fight in them.
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