So Gone by The Evangelicals is an album that is so messy and scatterbrained that the first listen is a baffling experience. A lot of “fractured pop” albums can have this effect on listeners at first, but the good ones have lyrical or melodic charms that eventually grow on you and dynamics that reveal themselves over time. Unfortunately, no matter how many times you listen to So Gone, the musical mysteries are never solved. The melodies never find their way out of the scribble scrabble guitar work, song structures never take shape, Josh Jones’ irritating whine, never becomes anything more than an irritating whine. What makes So Gone not just a disappointing listen, but a maddening one is that there are enough shreds of winning melodies and interesting sounds to suggest that if the Evangelicals focused on any idea long enough, they could produce a really exciting pop record. They don’t, and the result is 40-minutes of music that manages to be both exhausting and utterly dull at the same time.
So Gone is the first release by the Oklahoman trio, and throughout every musical doodle, pop and click it sounds as if the band is giddy with the excitement of recording their first record. Unfortunately, the Evangelicals seem to channel this energy not into songcraft, but into experimenting with instruments and sound effects. There are many, many sounds supplementing the guitar pop at the core of So Gone, including horns, Theremins, digital beats, synths and clavichords. Some of these sounds have interesting color and texture but they never enhance the songwriting and always feel like pointless musical distractions. When the songwriting takes the front seat, as on “My Heartache” and “Jen I’m A Mess”, the band achieves a sort of light, shimmering pop music. When their heads are elsewhere, as on the laptrock rock of “Into The Woods”, and the blissed-out dream pop of “Diving”, the band’s misguided musicality joins forces with their unflinching earnestness to produce a music that is something akin to bad karaoke.
Fractured pop has never appealed to the masses, nor does it intend to, but when a band like the Neutral Milk Hotel or the Flaming Lips comes around and gets it right, they create a unique music filled with strange excitements and often a quirky grace. I’d really love to say that So Gone is a challenging but worthy record in the tradition of those great artists, but there simply doesn’t seem to be any method to the band’s madness. Hopefully the Evangelicals will get their act together and record an album with all of the inventiveness and none of the clutter of So Gone, but until then, their music will most likely be doomed to a long life in the 6 CD Changer at the hipster coffee shop. |