Maritime
Heresy And The Hotel Choir
In
order to build a little trust with our audience, and to address and overcome
your objections, we’ll lay all of our cards on the table with this one.
The first song on this album contains the line, “sticks and stones will
break my skin and bones.” At impressionable points in the lives that
converge here at the factual, we dug the Promise Ring in such a way that we may
not always have been willing to admit so freely – it was, after all, emo
music from Wisconsin.
Following the bad publicity of recent discontented generations, obvious songs
about depression are universally unfashionable after a certain developmental
stage, and if you’re not there yet, you should consider accelerating your
personal development (if you have some trouble here, try the ‘Small
World’ ride at Disney World – it helped me through some tough
times). Also, if you’re wondering why this album is on the top 30 and
the tone here is so defensive, then why don’t you go out for a bite with
your buddies at your local TGI Fridays before punching yourself in whatever
genitalia you may have?
With
all of the above disclosed, what a fundamentally sound, emotionally mature pop
album Davy Van Bolen and co. have put together. These guys are veterans who
have made their mistakes, powered through them, and risen above the shitty
adult contemporary wreck heap. The hooks are catchy like pop hooks ought to
be, but I don’t need to hear them just to scratch an itch. Rather, the
tunes tend to sneak in and play in the semi-consciousness for days. Crescendoing
4/4 bridges steal songs from down-stroke verses and instrumentally restrained
choruses. The quarter rest shows up to set up some nice flourishes like the jab
setting up the cross. The lyrics trudge confidently in the fading middle space
between simple pop dichotomies (happy vs. unhappy, secure vs. insecure, belief
vs. faith no more, excited vs. bored, leading vs. alienated, and so on). While
many of the lyrics are mostly impressionistic (careful analysis of what the
Guns of Navarone have to do with anything will likely lead to a lot of
malarkey), the straight forward choices lob up the sort of wisdom you like to
find on a tea bag. After what the Bare Naked Ladies did to your FM dial,
that’s tough to do credibly, so give factually opinionated credit where
credit is due.
-Josh Woodbeck, 2008
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