Death Cab For Cutie guitarist/producer Chris Walla traveled a long strange road to get his debut solo album Field Manual into the hands of music lovers. He was working on the album in a studio in Vancouver and had sent a data hard drive, containing important music files, to his Seattle-based label Barsuck Records via courier. The hard drive was confiscated, for some inexplicable reason, by U.S. customs officials, but Walla soldiered on, working off the original tapes and a back-up drive. Lucky for everyone involved, fan and musician alike, the album was finished on time and it is more than worth all the effort it took to get it here. In fact, Walla will definitely have the last laugh since Field Manual just happens to a have a political bent - and a very critical one, at that.
With his slightly dusty vocals traveling between pop rock songs and folky "message" tunes, Walla comes off as a traveling troubador with an eye for the human condition and a love of the land not unlike indie folk-hero Josh Ritter. On one of the album's strongest tracks, "A Bird Is A Song", he calls out "Colorado, can you hear me?" before launching into a gentle ode to the simple pleasures of nature where "words are tied to wings". "St. Modesto" is also heralded in a folk ballad as "the power cord that made the light". Overall, Walla is good at singing searching folk songs even if a few of the songs like "Our Plans, Collapsing" get a little too heavy-handed and preachy at times.
When it comes time to go on the warpath though, the singer/songwriter pulls out the stops with a rock number called "Archer V. Light" whose pounding sound and thundering base line owes a debt to "My Sharona" by The Knack. It's a fierce, almost savage, condemnation of government power run amuck as Walla taunts, "I've cornered you, Roman Senator". He stokes the fire even more on "Everyone Needs A Home" where he sings how "a FEMA trailer does not ease the blow".
Whether he's shooting slings and arrows or exploring the more wistful side of human nature, Chris Walla has made a more than successful transition from being simply a guitarist/producer to a solo artist, in his own right.
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