Matt and Bubba Kadane, ex-linchpins of Bedhead,
continue to embrace "the comfort in being sad" on this,
their second album as the New Year. With their musical
cohorts, including Chris Brokaw on drums, they expound
a vaguely millennial angst but narrow its focus onto
the personal. They combine the angular dread of Joy
Division with the slow burn of the Velvet Underground
(circa the third album), underpinned with some sinuous
rock dynamics and topped off with laconic, sometimes
languid vocals, and lyrics that seem to take a
knowing nod at both the band's musical antecedents and
at the whole "sad" ethos.
Perfectly poised between
bitterweet melody and encroaching gloom, "The End's
Not Near" is the opening song, its title deceptively
optimistic, its lyrical punch line simple but deadly:
"The end's not near/ It's here...." The vocals sound
washed out, comfortably numb, but the frankness in
their delivery is more effective than any over-emoting
could be.
On "Sinking Ship," the narrative voice calmly
dissects a disintegrating situation, then withdraws: "I just wanna get out of
here and unhook my smile from
my ears... all these quick friendships can't survive
the sinking ship." "Chinese Handcuffs" is another
metaphor: "Things that bind in pain/ Keep us in
love." It's a bleak song lyrically, but with a firm
sense of momentum and with a dynamic instrumental
backing. It ripples with a refined, musical
musculature, peppered with short outbursts of noisy
guitar.
At the start of the portentously titled "Age of
Conceit" the lyrics state, "I don't believe in
what I now have to believe in," and later finish by declaring "This is a new age/ Of
conceit," echoing the old Velvet Underground song,
then adding a new twist. In truth, there's a bit of
that conceit in the band's music, a solipsism that
hovers over it, preserving a sense of distance around
it.
"They" figure largely in the lyrics — "They jump
in bed like it's the end of the world" — the perpetual
other observed from an outsider's laconic viewpoint.
And eventually these no longer sound like songs for
the disenchanted and disenfranchised, but more the
products of an all-powerful narrative voice, coolly
detailing the causes and symptoms of breakdown and
disengagement.
It's fortunate, then, that the
streamlined, subtle attack of the band's music
overrides these shortcomings, conveying both power and
sensitivity (and occasionally stretching song-defined
boundaries, as with the extended guitar sprawl on the
penultimate track, "18").
|
