MusicBoxer.com

This bugger Josh Ritter moves from Idaho to Brooklyn after years of successful international touring with his post-folk catalog and gets writer’s block. The results of which is uncanny and of the quality of “Barton Fink” only more people will understand it. So Runs the World Away is 13 tracks of amazing, subtle, literary and scientifically romantic.

So Runs is Josh Ritter’s fifth full-length album, sixth or seventh if you include his first self-released album and/or his live album only available in Ireland. He has learned and evolved across every album and this is no exception. Where Animal Years was distant and cavernous, Historical Conquests was playful and wry, So Runs is complex and mythological. It reads like a brilliant dissertation on folk.

Track themes run the gamut of time, monsters, explorers, folk heroes, relativity, and love all woven together to describe each other. The second track, “Change of Time,” featured on the NBC show “Parenthood,” love, time, water and monsters all stand in place of each other. His wife sings backing vocals in a haunting refrain as a slide guitar sways like a boat in a storm and rhythm section pounds on the hull. Next comes “The Curse,” which was, according to every interview and article he has appeared in, the first song written for the album that broke his writer’s block. It took three listens for me to realize it is about a mummy and archaeologist. It is a subtle and lovely waltz without even delving into the lyrics. Next is “Southern Pacifica,” a song that has replaced Modest Mouse’s “Trucker’s Atlas” as the best traveling the country backbeat on the drums. The play on the snare and hi-hat in the verse is the clack of a train as it slowly passes through town and the chorus’ pace is the train striding across the open middle of the country.

“Rattling Locks” deserves it’s own paragraph. Josh admits it is the darkest song he has ever written, about standing in the cold and the rain realizing the locks to your home have been changed by your ex. In pre-release concert footage I heard on YouTube I assumed the vocal distortion on this song was a byproduct of the recording. It wasn’t. The vocals are purposely harsh and strained, bled out on the edge of the mic’s range. The loathing and hatred of that break, of someone controlling the boundaries of space, of your relationship, the sacrifices and pain. None of that former love plays out. The percussion is pounded out on emptiness. I learned the hollowness of humanity watching you pass in and out of my life. It also happens to contain the first of my favorite physics metaphors on the album: eyes like black holes.

Next the album turns to fatal confrontations between folk heroes, lighthearted skippings of love poems (with another killer physics metaphor), a brilliantly solid Springsteen-inspired rocker, and a horse-thief chase which may or may not be about chasing the remainder of what you were and what you wanted to be. Then it hits a small low point of “See How Man Was Made,” which is a crooning lonely song about not much else except not being alone. But that turns around with a truly remarkable story of loneliness in “Another New World.” An explorer, alone in the masses of society, convinces a chartering club that there is a new world above the north pole and charges off into the arctic circle to be with his ship, the Annabell Lee. The story twists and turns with no resolution.

Next to last is my favorite song, “Orbital.” It is the only song Josh doesn’t play on on any of his albums. It is what love would be if it could be described by relativity. Much like the endearing love that blooms between two unlikely survivors in a missile silo during WWIII from Historical conquests, it hits on all marks while diving into complex scientific territory. A drumline cadence introduces a swirling, twisting array of instruments I cannot even identify. The chorus is simply humming while the world opens up and orbits around the sound. Love as mass transforming to light as it accelerates, as “every time you come around, the room lights up and time slows down…”

The album ends as all of Josh’s do, on a simple light number. This time it is about dispelling fear. He talks of this album as being grown, being past those moments of trying to make it, having fought and lost and won. “Long Shadows” plays to that.

Since this album was released I cannot stand to put it down. It surpasses expectations built by previous outings and makes its own mark. In some ways it brings the sound back around to his earlier albums while retaining what he has learned. Pick it up and check out one of his tour dates to see a really amazing and authentic performance.

The Weakerthans defy tradition by releasing an album titled Reunion Tour as their fourth full-length album then go for a live album with mostly new material and a few old favorites. What to do as a reviewer with this material but to just revel in the fact that since I have not seen them live this allows me to at least pretend it is the power and passion of a live performance that is causing the waves of tears to cascade down my crimson face during “Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure.”

OK, keyboard dried of salty embarrassment I can return to typing. The album. Well, as a fan, I love the fact that they put something out rather than just leaving us with nothing for another four years. As an objective reviewer I can’t help but saying it is just OK. The album includes everything of even minor note from their previous album with a number of good ones from their earlier work. Nothing about Reunion Tour would make me get this album for that material. But “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” and “Left and Leaving” would drive someone to pick up the album with the latter title. It is a fan’s delight, but not much more. This isn’t so much an indictment of the live album as praise for the intimacy of their studio albums.

But as a fan’s delight, oh how it delights. An album with both Virtute’s is a must own. This damn feline is one of the most powerful characters ever written into song and to have the bookends of the story of strength on one disc is a Weakerthan’s must-have. The performance is sincere but very much similar to album performances. The fanfare on “Manifest” stands out a bit more than it does on the album with some vocal support. The encores of “Fire Door” and “Virtute Explains” are the nuggets of wonderful as well as the crowd cheering and singing along declaring their hatred for Winnipeg (where the album was recorded).

And that is what this album captures: the Weakerthan’s ability to encapsulate the changeful nature of home, of location and self. The ending tracks start with “I Hate Winnipeg” in the namesake town with the crowd cheering them on. Then it leads in to “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” which languishes in the tormented tension between staying to keep promises when home is driving you away.

“And I love this place the enormous sky and the places hands they are haunted by so why can’t I forgive these buildings, these frameworks labeled ‘home’.”

And closes on Virtute telling us why she left. DAMN THAT CAT I AM CRYING AGAIN!!!!!!!

“I can’t remember the sound you found for me.”

The crowd calling out that line. This is the Weakerthans. Looking back at the shattered remains of change and embracing the lack of narrative that could tell you why history broke your heart but doesn’t.

So that crazy lady from that movie your girlfriend saw, Zooey Deschanel, and M. Ward are staying together for more awesomeness. Besides the odd one-off cotton commercial you heard her in Zooey does have quite the voice, and by teaming up with her and her manic pixie dream girl alt-old county vibing style M. Ward keeps from becoming just another indie washout. I kid, I don’t doubt M. Ward but by teaming up with this one he gains an edge. And Volume Two is worth every cent.

On Volume One Zooey and M. do covers intermixed with originals. This time around it is all but two originals and they all could have been re-imagined (as those Hollywood bastards call their lack of creativity these days) Hank Williams originals. My personal favorite is “Lingering Still” which keeps me playing the A-side over and over. While that righteous bastard Justin Bieber is singing monosyllabic baby babies like Rivers Cuomo (and apparently being guilty of screwing over Gears of War press releases), Zooey is cranking out solid chorus after chorus about haunting memories and heartbreak. Check this out from the fifth track, “Lingering Still”:

“And the world’s like a science and I’m like a secret
and I saw you lingering still, still,
I saw you lingering still…”

This is instant classic material with a calypso backbeat like Nancy Sinatra.

Pick up She & Him Volume Two. I recommend a vinyl and free mp3 download from the label so you can love it at home with the depth it deserves and then carry around the sad digital offspring of brilliance on your lifesavIngs-podphonepad.

Los Campesinos! have released their second (possibly third) album and it is wicked. Romance is Boring was released January and it is chock full of nutty nuts that light up those indy receptors in our ear-tastebuds. Musicboxer’s Free Music Friday featured a song off of the album, “The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future,” and it is still the best thing this album has going for it. Unfortunately it lands later in the album but what precedes it is worth listening to as well. The easy review is if you liked that link off of Free Music Friday then you will appreciate this album.

There is a certain morbidity to this album that reminds me of the COTIcats photoshops from Garrison Dean’s most recent “It’s a Disaster!” column on Io9.com. Basically it is quite a lot of “my crazy girlfriend and death and yelling and I hate the ‘church’ and drowning after falling off of a pier” type of songs. But not any more than say, Pinkerton, really. And the music is definitely an art-rock-noise variant similar to Stars. Which I like a lot. And are made up of members of Broken Social Scene. And are all on the Canadian Label Arts & Crafts.

Really, the back end of this album, starting with “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know” after an odd coda of a 45 second track is where the meat is. Loud, noisy, messy pop rock goodness. So check it out. It isn’t perfect, but the whole thing is enjoyable to say the least.

No One’s First and You’re Next, the latest and long awaited EP by Modest Mouse, is good classic EP material. It is a collection of different ideas and feelings swept up after the band’s last two albums, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank and Good News for People who Love Bad News and the first EP since Everywhere and His Nasty Parlor Tricks. In one sentence, like most post-studio leftover EPs, it is tasty leftovers without coherence that share the flavor of the original batch. Just like the biscuit recipe says though, you can gather the dough scraps, roll them out and cut more biscuits, but they won’t be as savory and flaky as that first rolled-out batch.

Those folks chanting sell-out over the last album’s mainstream success should appreciate this albums longer instrumentals, dissonance and wall-building sound. “Whale Song” could have been off of an early demo had it worse production values. “Perpetual Motion Machine” has a New Orleans Funeral March feel to it but ends too short. The two singles, “Satellite Skin” and “Guilty Cocker Spaniels” can best be described as the most single-worthy of the bunch. Both feel the most like the previous full length albums and I can easily see how they don’t stand out enough from either album to have them included. “Satellite” has a characteristic Modest Mouse guitar that leads you to feel at home right off the bat.

Of course you can’t discuss this album without including a mention of the “King Rat” music video involving the late Heath Ledger. There, I did it.

As for the song itself, I like the violin and horns. And it carries the storytelling feel of Lonesome Crowded West material.

Overall, No One’s First and You’re Next fits right in with Modest Mouse EPs, and they are better than most EPs. It brings back some of the pre-“Float On” feeling. The singles might fly but “King Rat” and “Whale Song” will last in this fan’s memory.

As an aside during this review I discovered that I have been listening to We Were Dead in the exact opposite track order for the last two years! This may be why I feel that it deserved best album of the year over Neon Bible in 2007. But that’s what you get when you let iTunes control your listening order and somehow the tracks get jacked. The album I’ve always listened to starts with the heavy pounding “Invisible” and ends with the flowing “March into the Sea”. Try it! I don’t think I want to listen to it in the intended order.