Bands are a tricky species. Listing the ones I've liked over the past decade would take forever, but listing the albums that I was sold on after months of hearing about them would be small. I heard less about Johnny Damon from Yankee fans in the off-season than I did about how fantastic The Long Winters were from a few of my friends. When I moved to NYC last year, I essentially left them behind, but a recent acquaintance rekindled my interest with one phrase: "the vocalist is fantastic." I'm a sucker for clever, plaintive or methodically written lyrics, and Putting the Days to Bed reminds all of us that two out of three ain't bad. The best part is, the music accentuates them perfectly.
While lacking in sadness or pain, the verbosity of both the music and the message of John Roderick mix beautifully with the playfully plain structures. Oftentimes, the music will build and tousle the way the lyrics fumble through chord changes and choruses. The signature of the album is not its grandiose nature or its beatific instrumentation. It's not the fantastic mixture of rock elements (solos, verse chorus verse, etc.) with the somberness of acoustic guitar and horns. Instead, the signature is the fact that everything makes sense. Logistically, the vocal harmonies, the musical choices, the lyrics—even the order of the songs is unblemished. You can hear Roderick writing these by himself, but you can hear the band making perfect use of the basic chords, the aforementioned plainspoken lyrics, and the general malaise of songwriting (especially prevalent on so many "third albums") dissipates into a rollicking powerhouse of an album.
There are flaws—the sometimes weak-voiced narration stumbles at times, too many build-ups into weak conclusions, etc.—but why waste a fine album? Why degrade a band that has put together a rock album proportionate to the sum of its parts? I don't know why, I just won't. The clarity of order and songwriting capability of these gentlemen shines through too well to bog them or the reader down in bitter musings from an impressed reviewer. Let us leave the review at this: it is important to know quality rather than to remark upon inferiority. Putting the Days to Bed is quality, and that is quite enough for me. Hell, the song "Clouds" would be good enough for me anyway.
NOTE: The press release for this album quotes singer John Roderick: "I like chairs that don't creak and songs that don't suck." Yep. I'm officially a fan. |