(Orange Twin)
RECOMMENDED
Here's maybe the most frequently written sentence in rock criticism: "This is a promising band from Athens, Georgia." But let's not be so bitter, at least not just yet. Nana Grizol is a fascinating entity: a My Dinner with Andre-like elevation of and meditation upon the act of conversation. Central figure Theo Hilton thrives upon a specific practice of singing songs as if he's talking to you in extended rambles and big-brother lectures and run-on sentences, like fellow Athenian Michael Stipe in recent years but considerably friendlier, almost entirely free of arty meandering. Hilton is vocally opposed to "bullshit," but not aggressively. Though his lyrics periodically inject some wit or artificial conceit, for the most part he enunciates with clarity and impeccable straightforwardness. This is amusing because none of the above were remotely a part of the doctrine for Neutral Milk Hotel, the band whose ashen remains provided two thirds of Nana Grizol's members. If Laura Carter and Robbie Cucchiaro had great creative input in Love It Love It, which I doubt, it can be heard as kind of a reaction against Jeff Mangum and all his insular abstractions. But that's reading a lot into this, as an NMH fan is wont to do.
Musically, it's garage rock with horns -- fragmented and awkward but adorably so, and sort of beside the point anyway. Let's think of these songs, then, as conversations... because as songs they're problematic, mostly brief blips of hooks running over variations on a consistent idea. Hilton takes center stage for all of his material, and his conceits and tangents become the appeal of the record by which it lives or dies. His thesis is buried under some brass on "Motion in the Ocean": "Language makes a simple feeling seem oh so absurd." As suggested by that thought, Hilton doesn't lack a sense of irony -- he just got finished saying he hasn't much use for words -- but he prefers to fight against it. The result is a sort of triumph of mock-proof emotion. He's entirely aware he's expressing things that are obvious, overstated, even silly, but he's in a proud pop music tradition that goes back to the Shirelles wondering if you'd still love them tomorrow. Graduated from adolescence but still years away from the world-weary romanticism of so much indie pop, this music is fixated upon the feeling of early twenties decadence and transience, the yearning and fleeting nature of college-aged connections. It sounds a bit like a road album because the lives it seeks to document are so constantly moving, but rather than an act of navel gaze or melancholy the record's a world-embrace. Hilton's no dummy: seconds after somewhat goofily expressing amazement that the sun rises every day, he goes off on "the sinking sunken feeling that you get on the roofs of tall buildings" and the guy can make you well up. Or he can talk about going "back to Portland" (of course, Portland) and expel some patter about "the best books of our lives, they're being written all the time" in the same breath as getting choked up on the mere eloquent "Well these last few years, I guess they've been pretty weird."
So he's smart, really more mature than smart which is a nice change from alt-rock normal, and the feverish optimism and head-screwed-on-tight nature of the lyrics offset the overuse of clichés and somewhat tired sentiments that aren't hollow but just melodramatic, which I hasten to add is also in the same fine pop music tradition. Somewhere in all the carping about change and friendship and neglect is this immaculate wisdom. On "Voices Echo Down Thee Halls" there's this whole bit about wishing you could live or be someplace else, and Hilton articulates the fallacy and humanity of such displacement with a clever simplicity even Woody Allen can't quite approach. "Why is everything like that so concrete / When that's the same stuff under your feet / That connects where you're standing to the place you'd rather be?"
Hilton's so unapologetic and out in the open it's tempting to think of him as kicking against hate and the darkness, especially when he gets impressively boisterous on "Stop and Smell the Roses" (spitting out greeting card platitudes like "take life in smaller doses" like he's Johnny Rotten screaming about abortion) and furious on "Less Than the Air," on which he bursts into an immensely charming gibberish breakdown like a much less affected David Byrne. Indie folk like this usually isn't the place for such rampant, personal positivity. Even amidst the mournful horns on "Tamborine-N-Thyme," Nana Grizol's music is a celebration.
The operative word here is sincerity: an all-consuming and relentless sincerity so naked it seems you couldn't break it down even if you wanted to. I get the same feeling from Bright Eyes, Titus Andronicus, and especially Pet Shop Boys (at least in the '90s), and Hilton may not be as articulate as Neil Tennant, Patrick Stickles, or Conor Oberst... but he's happier than all three, which sounds like empty praise but isn't. He's got shit figured out, including how to unexpectedly move you ("Tiny Rainbows") and how to do the same thing within a formal pop construction ("The Idea That Everything Could Possibly Ever Be Said"), which is something I wouldn't mind Nana Grizol tried a bit more of.
And hey, maybe this isn't as disconnected from Neutral Milk Hotel as it seems at first. Neither band has a Beautiful Music derivation, they'd both make your grandparents scream with their noisy outlandishness, even if they are Nice Young Folks, but the goal is sort of the same, shifted to a younger demographic -- make people swoon a little bit. "Circles 'round the moon, is this why city lights feel so awful? It should be unlawful to live where you can't see the sun." Laugh if you want, but I know that feeling, the same way I know "Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all," the same way I know how the card game in The Apartment feels. It's, like, OK to feel things, you know? The fuzz-rock giganticism of the FM '90s (to which "Everything You Ever Hoped or Worked For" pays fond tribute) taught me that in Billy Corgan's heyday. And now a lot of us need to learn it again, especially in the increasingly dour and humorless world of indie rock. These last few years have been pretty weird.
Lastly, the rational little things that keep me from absolutely adoring this record. First, like so many others, it operates more strongly as individual songs encountered separately than as a marathon, despite the astoundingly tasteful length of 29 minutes (with only one song significantly passing three minutes). As it is, the songs do run together... and so do some of the clichés, which can be a bit much at times. But really, the right to have this kind of sincerity and optimism served so skillfully and touchingly is worth it.
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