| There’s a sort of vertigo that results
from this tension between the album’s overall sound -- how then
it seems -- and the excellence of the songs on it; between the unfettered
love that must drive a guy to make a record that sounds like this
one and the controlled passion with which Loewenstein approaches his
task. Which is to say: it’s pretty excellent. All the best records
should make you dizzy, and should make you wonder whether all the
old verities weren’t actually the God’s honest truth: that
good music knows no ages or epochs, you know, or that talent is its
own justification, or that lines like “I hope you stay alive,
because I don’t do funerals” can never be out-of-place no
matter where they’re found (as they are, here, in the forboding
mid-tempo cruise called “Funerals”). The album’s fourteen
songs hang together terrifically, a mission statement from a corporation
whose employees are all lifers; the cumulative effect makes me, at
least, want to dance, which never happened with any indie rock
records back when people listened to indie rock. |
