(Orindal)
(Grimsey)
(Merge)
Stopgap releases by two artists I love and one about whom I hold mixed feelings but who recorded an album in 2011 that I think is a work of genius. Curiously, despite their breeziness all three manage to be more of a slog than the latest albums by the same performers. (Crucially, these are all, for every practical purpose, solo acts.)
Advance Base's Owen Ashworth probably acquits himself most easily; the modest aspirations of his brief set of covers of Washington Phillips tunes makes it an easy sell to anyone who normally enjoys Ashworth's singing and arrangements, the person writing this eagerly included. Phillips, whose famously ghostly and tiny repertoire of gospel tunes from the first half of the last century is legendary, is an odd choice for Ashworth's timbre and sensibility, though, which is either the point or the mistake, I'm not sure which. His work's frequently been covered by outlaw country acts and irony-addicted indie rockers alike; neither grouping easily encompasses Ashworth, whose sincerity and graceful spirit are too much an attraction to his own work for us not to believe he feels a kinship to these songs about Jesus and rising up from sin. However, like several things that Ashworth has released, his actual purpose here seems so personal that it's hard for an outsider to get a handle on it. But he's a wonderful artist paying homage to another one, and there's enough modest joy here that you should support him. (It does serve as a handy reminder that I desperately need to check out that instrumental album he put out last year, though.)
Andrew Bird is coming directly off a year in which he made his most bloated album yet (Break It Yourself) and one of his leanest and most spontaneous and invigorating (Hands of Glory). Bird's been castigated in recent years as part of some sort of counter-counterculture of NPR-adored indie rockers but this is extremely unfair; as a writer and performer, he's a joy to listen to and his instincts are almost always good. He released I Want to See Pulaski at Night very suddenly and unexpectedly this year, so it's a good bet he did so strictly because he felt like it. With only one vocal track (and one with a bit of inevitable whistling), it's really a protracted mood piece whose major steps forward are on the track "Hover II," which drones and menaces a bit. The entirety sounds like a rather dignified film score, probably for Lincoln or something. It isn't a particularly pleasurable listen, but it's hard to want to carp at Bird for being so prolific lately. Now if he could just cover "Heroin" on disc.
Destroyer's Five Spanish Songs has been so ruthlessly promoted by Merge Records it barely seems like stopgap anything, or like Dan Bejar and his cronies are in on the joke of just what a novelty and goofoff it really is. It's Nada Como El Sol for the 2010s -- Bejar's voice is dubious to start with, and on this inexplicable novelty he's more annoying the faster the song is. These are actually songs originally performed by the band Sr. Chinarro, so it's not merely an arm's-length version of Destroyer in that it trades on the language barrier oddity, it's also a covers set! In hilariously cranky interviews, Bejar defensively insists that the English language is "spent." Destroyer went into the studio, bashed this out without much talk, and left, with Bejar excited about not worrying so much over little details as on Kaputt. For me, because Kaputt is the first Destroyer record I really felt drawn to, those little details were the point -- and with arrangements this rote backing weak vocals, I see little reason to listen to this, but in a strange way I kind of admire its obnoxiousness.
Nary a one of these records is likely to be making a lot of appearances in my headphones going forward, but that last point can extrapolate: I'm sort of glad these guys are still able to do weird little things like this. It makes the world of listening and collecting seem that much livelier, and fresher.
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