Too Late To Die Young, Departure Lounge’s third release, sees them retaining the heavy dream state of previous outing Jetlag Dreams but in the guise of rock and pop songs. ‘I love you’ initially sounds like some 1950’s oldie my Aunt Rebecca and/or Eunice would play in the minivan, its plaintive lyrics and layered, soaring harmonies bringing to mind Pet Sounds. The celebratory horns are reminiscent somehow of some New Orleans band I’ve never heard before, and as the song progresses one is treated to a punchingly giddy trumpet, a thick bass guitar, hand claps and an urban drum beat. ‘Tubular Belgians in my Goldfield,’ for all of its picked, distorted guitar and exciting percussion also has casiotone, Theremin and electravibe being tickled with persistent fingers into making sounds like fluttering lightning bugs in the backyard, a sound that recurs throughout the entirety of the album.
Young doesn’t sound so much an amalgam of genre’s (like an Odelay or White Album) but like a handful of them got together and just really got along for awhile, playing cards and shooting the shit. The run-in of the dreamy yet intense ’Tubular Belgians in my Goldfield’ into the make-you-feel-like-you’re-the-coolest-guy-in-the-pool-hall ‘Be Good to Yourself’ is as flawless as Kid A’s ‘Optimistic’ into ‘In Limbo’ and rocks like a swaggering Rolling Stone.
‘What You Have Is Good,’ the album’s second song, pops with a jangly acoustic guitar, a bubbly lead electric and hand claps; rolls with a bustling bass and foot-thumping drum; and dreams with a second guitar that wavers and itches and a melody that’s so pleasing it’s painful. It also stands outside of itself lyrically, like some of the funniest (and nastiest) Bob Dylan songs, where you can’t tell if he is talking to you or about you. It is perhaps the best song on the album and the most exciting and addictive one (for this listener, at least) since the Toadies ‘Hell Below/Stars Above,’ (the mind-blowing title track from their last album, oh so long ago.)
With a wealth of instruments at hand – including chimes, trumpet, double bass, piano, tuba – Too Late To Die Young has the vibrancy and immediacy of a pop record while retaining enough mystery and thoughtfulness to make repeated listens enjoyable. Pop ballads like ‘Over the Side’ and ‘Silverline,’ which are also male/female duets, with their pretty piano and percussion and almost call/response vocals, compliment the less formulaic ‘Coke & Flakes’ (featuring bluesy guitar, hand claps, dirty harmonica, and a wall of guitar fuzz somewhere behind it all) and album closer ‘Animals on my Mind,’ so that the entire record melds together due to the band’s ability to get all of these styles of music to get along together so well, as though they’re old friends.
Too Late To Die Young is the kind of record where every time my roommate walks in on me listening to it he’ll ask ‘What’s this?’ with a pleased and inquisitive look on his face; a record sometimes so different from itself and yet so well written and put together that it stands together solidly and without being unfamiliar or incoherent. Sometimes it’s classic rock cool, other times pop balladry, still others it’s hazy yet grooving like lightning bugs dancing, but at all times it is melodic and interesting, and features an anthem regarding thoughts about animals. |