An Acute Case: 28 April 2023

A writers round of boy geniuses, tik tokkers, transport nuts, and Nashville royalty old and new

boygenius: the record
Phoebe Bridgers is the one with the weightless voice, feathery arrangements, and trap doors built into her lyrics; Lucy Dacus the one with the shaded sonorities, whose approach to song writing is to give ten instructions where anyone else would say “turn left”; Julien Baker the more traditionally oriented guitar slinger, with thinner vocals, heavier hooks, and tighter verses. All three are marked by an agonising percipience, startlingly resonant vocal signal, and tendency to submit life's tiniest details to intense introspection. Again and again, within and between these 12 courageous songs, they ring the harmonic and stylistic changes to achieve a group voice that, if anything, augments their idiosyncrasies. If this is the inevitable fulfilment of their talent, the surprise is how masterfully they've commodified the piousness that surrounds them. Here, the impertinence of their band name is extended with a mischievous Rolling Stone cover, messianic album art, brazen “Revolution 0” song title, and sequencing that turns Leonard Cohen into a satanist. Hallelujah. A

Lana Del Rey: Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
Shrewd mythmaker turns her hand to autobiography, with some details lost to a mood so haunting it could be coming from beyond the veil, where the time for piano tinkling is endless. ** (“Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd” “Sweet” “A&W”)

Emperor X: Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor
Armed with just a guitar, four-track recorder, and handful of Wiki printouts, Chad Metheny returns to the U.S. from Germany, touring D.C., Philadelphia, Paterson, New Haven, Brooklyn, and Boston, and recording a song relating to the transit system in each. That the first night of the tour was cancelled after sparks from a freight train lit forest fires in New Jersey that shut down rail traffic in the Northeast corridor should give you some idea how he feels about said systems. More freely associative than coldly technocratic, if this isn’t performance as praxis, it’s at least a more useful form of protest than tweeting “because capitalism.” His arty folk-punk provides ample opportunity for clap-and-stomp-along. Only do that and risk missing out on inspirational verse such as “Why is the entrance to the new megamall separated from the street or elevated at all?" or “Cost per mile is not a sacred metric.” Refrains (mostly yelled) include “It was a cash grab,” “Funding was not available”, and “How you gonna pay for it?” The sub-basic set-up is something of a hindrance, leaving Metheny with few places to go—but I guess that’s activism for you. Given the circumstances, remarkably resourceful. A MINUS

Luke Laird, Lori McKenna, Barry Dean: The Songwriter Tapes, Vol. 1-3
In which a trio of Nashville chart-toppers offer up three hits and one unreleased apiece. The Writers Round settings surpass their potential pokiness to observe two maxims: Harlan Howard’s one about country songs only needing [oh come on, you know this], and Lori McKenna's brand new “It takes a lifetime of strangers to find some real good friends.” These three seem like just that. All have found more success as co-writers than lead artists, which in the cases of somewhat scraggly Laird and fruity Dean is understandable, but in the case of the understated yet penetrating McKenna is a crying shame. Unsurprisingly, her songs are all knockouts, spinning the complexities found in everyday situations into home truths with tangible detail and simple sincerity. The guys approach her level once or twice, the rest of the time getting by on the conviction of their melodies and some judicious studio gloss. Country radio listeners may prefer the Eric Church, Tim McGraw, John Pardi, et al. renditions. Should I ever feel the need to hear them, this is where I’ll turn. B PLUS

Willie Nelson: I Don't Know A Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard
Released two months before Nelson turns 90—when, because there has to be some unearthly reason he’s still this good, I expect he’ll transmogrify into his depiction on the cover—this is merely a legendary singer covering a canonical writer 57 years after first recording one of his songs. The gait is leisurely (“donkey donkey donkey” it gets called round here), Nelson’s deployment of his cracked quiver still perfectly imperfect. He handles benevolent regret (“Too Many Rivers”, “Life Turned Her That Way”) better than bitter regret (“The Chokin’ Kind”, “She Called Me Baby”) and treats the wilder tales (“I Don’t Know a Thing About Love”, “Busted”) with glee. It’s an approach to standards that, for him, is unusually standard. Though he saves one magic trick for the title track, which he convincingly sings from the point of view of both characters. A MINUS

New Pornographers: Continue as a Guest
A.C. Newman is still as clever as he is evasive, but on his latest batch of songs about half-heartedness as pragmatism, the music has started taking lessons from the lyrics. Which may be pragmatic but isn’t always fun. ** (“Pontius Pilate's Home Movies” “Last and Beautiful” “Fireworks in the Falling Snow”)

PinkPantheress: to hell with it
In my mind, it’s something of a snafu when the social media platform I thought was guilty of brutalising the attention economy propels a well-tended teenager into a bona fide superstar, possibly in spite of but more likely because of her uncommonly old-fashioned habits. On “Reason” she calls her song-snippets letters. On “I must apologise” she writes lists and signs them—in marker pen, no less. On “All my friends know” she asks “Did you ever like me? No worries if not” like she’s just discovered texting; while on “Just for me” she begins, “Apologies I followed you today I was in my car I wanted to come and see you from afar” like she’s just discovered poetry. If that makes you dig your nails into your palms, it’s because adolescence is rarely done this convincingly. The garage instrumentals she transforms into her singularly moody pop are divided straight down the middle into amateur and professional jobs, with the former of most interest largely because they’re lifted wholesale from originals released around her estimated year of birth. While that could be of biographical significance, she probably just liked how they sounded, and in an era of deracinated pop culture their age posed no problem. It’s here and gone in under 19 minutes, but that’s more than enough time to feel the force of her personality. And talent. A MINUS

Wednesday: Rat Saw God
Sort through the lyrical clutter and there are powerful images to be found, especially when Karly Hartzman revisits her time at Sunday School. In shorter supply: riffs that stick in the memory and killer melodies that don’t belong to Ray Davies. ** (“Chosen To Deserve” “Quarry” “TV in the Gas Pump”)