Day 40: The Dodos – Visiter

How the hell had I not heard this? This album is seriously good stuff. From the first minute of the first track I knew I had something special on my hands. I was taken aback because the opening sounds uncannily like The Goo Goo Dolls for a moment (except without whatever retching that may induce in you), but there’s something immediately and wonderfully strange about this.

The Dodos are a two-piece (with a third member added recently) from San Francisco who have taken their influences and cut tiny shreds from each of them and made them into confetti. The music has a distinct character, which is something most bands can strive after for years without obtaining. Take two of the album’s best tracks: “It’s That Time Again” and “Fools“. The first is a stirring dirge, an Irish drunk song if I ever heard one, saddled with a profoundly simple sentiment; the second, a kind pop tune turned danceable with the addition of a drum track that gracefully skirts the edge of incongruity.

I always focus in on the drums in music. I used to nerd out on bands’ drummers pretty seriously. The Dodos brought that back out. The percussion, played on a custom kit that omits a bass drum, is some of the best I have ever heard. The patterns he plays are creative; between his tribal-sounding tom patterns and his heavy use of the drums’ metal rims, he infuses the songs with an indefatigable energy. He plays distinct, short patterns that repeat endlessly with seemingly little or no variation, but he seems try to avoid the beat as much as possible, leaving accents in odd places, and it gives most of the songs a great tension, as often it sounds like if the pattern paused for even a second it would fall completely apart.

What’s remarkable about this album, to me, is that every song feels distinct without seeming like they sat down and said “Let’s write a reggae song” or “Now we need a ballad.” Songs diverge throughout the album’s length, as instrumental embellishments give songs hints of outside influence — for instance, “Winter“, with its weary trombone accompaniment tingeing the choruses with hints of Beirut.

This album plays at times like a study of duality. “Winter” is actually a good example. Split off from its drum track and maybe slowed down a notch, it would make a stirring acoustic ballad dedicated to a flighty, sour lover. When placed atop the drum track the song comes alive. A sad song turns aggressive, and mourning turns into an indignant shrug. While a songwriter could put a dozen “Park Song“s on an album and probably have something great on their hands, the album’s more curious moments come when the two musicians start channeling their energy into the same feeling — or rather, what is more obviously the same feeling.

The album’s heady latter half is built around four songs, each just over six minutes long, with palate cleansers in between. The long tracks find the band really bleeding into each other. While they spend much of the album sounding acutely aware of what each other is doing, on these tracks they really merge. The guitars and drums meet and calamity waxes and wanes.  These tracks are much noiser and more raucous, while never losing sight of the tenderness that makes tracks like “Park Song” so remarkable. On these tracks, at their best moments, these two manage to sound like something new and vital, something fully-realized. Highly exciting music from start to finish. I don’t want to go to sleep because I don’t want to give it up in the morning.

Day 34: Yonder Mountain String Band – Elevation

Bluegrass isn’t really my thing at all. I can get into it, but it takes some effort. It’s not something I can just relax and enjoy; I have to kind of lean forward in my chair and squint and whatnot to really tune into it at all. Actually I’m being a little kind; I kind of hate it and have a hard time taking it seriously. But it’s the kind of knee-jerk hate that’s based on only having heard a collective maybe 15 minutes of bluegrass music in my life, so it’s the kind of thing I’m here to get rid of in the first place.

Eight hours of continuous listening later, I had to open up their reviews on Amazon to find out whether these guys were serious or not. Turns out they were, and Yonder Mountain is even a couple peoples’ favorite band. I wouldn’t have known.

Here comes the part where I stop being negative for a minute. From a technical standpoint they’re pretty fucking impressive. “Mental Breakdown” is just shy of three minutes of frenetic shredding, each instrument taking a solo turn. It’s genuinely fun stuff.

There are what sounds like three singers, and they take turns singing lead on songs. I’m guessing they write the lyrics for the songs they take, because each one is different. The tracks are evenly split between story songs about no-good ramblin’ men living life on the run (“The Bolton Stretch”, “On The Run”), several junior-high love songs (“Once I had a sweetheart and our love was fair/I remember her brown eyes and her long, dark hair/I remember summer nights down at the fishin’ hole/Rollin’ around in the tall grass and the sweet lies we told“). The best song to me ends up being ballad “Eight Cylinders”, where they rein in their chops and let the music (and the listener) breathe.

The vocals are a strong point. They harmonize extremely well, running through roller-coaster scales in lockstep, sounding flawless. Best of all, their tones just mix well. Unfortunately, the singer who does “40 Miles From Denver” (and a couple others) has a really unpleasant voice. As a harmonizing instrument it sounds perfect, but out front, singing lead, it’s nasal and strained beyond its capability all the time. The only other problem is that every song rehashes the same lyrical themes and the same verse-big harmony chorus-instrumental breakdown formula, and the album falters because most of the tracks end up feeling indistinguishable.

In my brief research I frequently saw String Cheese Incident mentioned in the same sentence as Yonder Mountain. I’m not surprised. This is jammy stuff. When they spent 3 minutes of a 5 minute song noodling on the banjo, I got the impression that was them trying to tune it down. That’s my biggest complaint here. I’m not sure who this is for. That’s why I was wondering whether these guys were serious. Their constant soloing doesn’t really serve the songs. Sometimes music like this just comes across as an excuse for some really talented musicians to have fun challenging themselves, and sometimes they put on a hell of a show. Maybe they’d be different live, but on the record I don’t really feel like they gave me anything at all.