Well, I just declared the new Frightened Rabbit album my favorite of the year so far. So now it’s time to talk about some records that I was highly anticipating but which (for one reason or another) didn’t quite make the cut. First on the list is the follow-up to my #1 from last year. And that right there might tell you a little something about what went wrong on this one.
The Meaning of 8 from Cloud Cult was stunning, expansive, emotional. It dragged me through the coals and showed me things I had never seen before. To try and turn around from something like that and put out a new record in less than 12 months is tough work unless your name is Lennon or McCartney.
Feel Good Ghosts is by no means a bad record. But it does fall a little bit flat, working with many of the same themes and sonic textures, but without nearly the same emotional resonance. The deep layering of vocals becomes far more of a distraction this time around. Same thing with Craig Minowa’s slight lisp. Where these both combined to produce some absolutely beautiful harmonic resonances on 8, this time the dissonance takes over in some unfortunate moments. This is most clear on the otherwise lovely “No One Said It Would Be Easy” which, with slightly different production decisions, could have easily stood out as one of the best songs of the year.
Thematically, they mine common territory: the bizarreness of our everyday lives, the universality of suffering, our attempts to find meaning in the chaos, and the way everything we thought we had left behind stays with us in the most unexpected ways. That final point is the underlying motif for the whole record, with its constant references to ghosts, figurative and literal.
These are important subjects, and they treat them with great care and delicacy for the most part. But this only makes the occasional mis-step stick out all the more. It’s very easy when talking about “life, the universe, and everything” to veer into lyrics that skip over incredibly difficult questions with trite references to hope and dreams. What made songs like “Chemicals Collide” and “Thanks” work was their obliqueness. There were answers somewhere in there, but you had to work for them.
I don’t feel like the same care is evident this time around. “Journey of the Featherless,” for example, features one of the most gorgeous melodies they’ve ever created, but is marred by clunky references to Ebay and cell phones and lines that sound like cliches from the moment they’re uttered (“I say that’s it’s worth dreaming, just for the dream of it”). The concepts are there, but the subtlety is not.
By far the worst offender is the album closer “Love You All” which consists entirely of Minowa repeating a single line: “I love my father. I love my mother. And when it’s my time to go, I want you to know, I love you all.” What aims for a childish simplicity comes off as sickly sweet. Once again, this is in large part because of the production choices. First and most significantly, the inexplicable decision to run his voice through some kind of vocoder that makes it all sound like some kind of 80s reject of a song. This, combined with stretching the song out to 5+ minutes, the strings, and the supporting chorus turns what could have been have been an incredibly affecting coda into a piece of cotton candy: delicious but ultimately without much substance.
If “Love You All” is the macro example of this phenomenon, there’s a number of micro ones as well. Witness the unbearable line from “Hurricane and Fire Survival Guide”that demolishes an otherwise perfectly balanced tone: “I’m sick of all of this poop that brings me down.” I mean, c’mon. How can I be expected to take the rest of it seriously after that?
The thing about all of this is that I really like every song I’ve talked about so far, and plenty of others, too. This is in many respects a fantastic record. The melodies are stunning. To listen to “Journey of the Featherless” is, to quote Sam Gamgee, like being inside a rainbow. “When Water Comes to Life” is a perfect description of how the song sounds – the strings ebb and flow like liquid. The technique of slow buildups that lead inexorably into a final cacophony is deployed to stunning effect on a number of tracks (“When Water Comes to Life” and “No One Said It Would Be Easy” to name a couple).
“The Will of a Volcano” put me off on the first few listens, as something far less easy on the ear than what I traditionally like from them. But the more I hear, the more it strikes me as a great example of where they could have gone. For a band with such an ear for harmonies, it is all to easy to dish out sugary melodies, but they also have many other talents, which only get a full chance to shine when they push their boundaries, as here.
This all means that comparative throwaways (like “Story of the Grandson of Jesus” which comes off as the wilted b-side to “Alien Christ,” or “The Ghost inside Our House” which only sounds halfway complete) still have a lot to recommend them.
And that’s the real devil of it. This band is talented enough that even critically flawed songs like “Love You All” can still inspire listen after listen. And if I didn’t have past evidence that they could fit all the pieces together in such a perfect way, I would probably gush about this record, flaws and all.
As it is, I’m left writing a mostly negative review of a record that could easily be one of my 10 favorites for the year. Whether that’s more a comment on the album or on me personally, you can decide for yourself.
Journey of the Featherless – Cloud Cult
No One Said It Would Be Easy – Cloud Cult