There is a sense of relief in a music reviewer’s year when he/she finally encounters their bona fide favorite album of the year. Sometimes it arrives in January, making for a smooth, easy listening year. Other times it is a November baby, a favorite born from desperation.
This year, in 2008, the favorite album for at least this reviewer comes in August.
The first, most important sense you get from Danny Seim’s Lackthereof record, Your Anchor, is that his goal was to strip his polished sound down. Known for a sleeker instrumentation with Portland, Oregon’s, Menomena (try Under An Hour on for size as an underrated record of the decade), the song structures here are generally more conventional, but they’re raw at their core. “Fire Trial” is one of the strongest songs on the album (risking hyperbole to say strongest of the year?) with slightly strained vocals over an almost folk/surf guitar sound; similar is “Choir Practice,” a song with cleaner, crisp guitars and rolling percussion with each delightful strike clearly audible.
The map to Your Anchor is clear—every line is smartly drawn, and it’s a record begging for repeat listens. Seim’s voice is never more frail and borderline frightening than it is on “Doomed Elephants,” a necessarily shuddering abstraction amid the ten songs. Lackthereof redeems the need for songwriting complexity with “Locked Upstairs,” a song that seems to lumber through a lovely, yet stormy morass.
Mostly the lyrics are nonsensical—also abstractions—but they’re unimportant. In the least pretentious way, Seim’s voice is an instrument, one woven perfectly into the mix. There is a chance that something better will come later in the year, but I doubt it. This is a breath of lovely air.
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