Rock and Soll Sensibility?
Written: Apr 16 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Smart Girls, Librarian
Cons: the overall bland repetition of everything else
The Bottom Line: Set aside California rock, southern blues, or New York garage rock. Does the down-to-earth nature of the Midwest fit with rock and pop music?
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| DrFaustus's Full Review: Public Library - Jonathan Rundman Movies |
Seems like every regions has its deep-seated stereotypical disposition. New Yorkers get to be pushy and insensitive. Californians have their crazy new aged tendencies. Southerners get their old-fashioned charm, while Pacific northwesterners have their whole brooding, grunge culture. New Englanders seem so aloof and so liberal, and Texans end up coming across as fiercely proud. Here in the Midwest, well, we often get labeled with something referred to as a Midwestern sensibility.
All in all, sensibility isn't such a bad trait for a stereotype, but it certainly doesn't lend itself well to a raise-your-first-in-the-air, make-the-devil-horns-gesture, scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs, rock-out-hard attitude. Maybe that's why we don't see too many big-name acts in the music world hailing from here in the Midwest. Those who do trace their roots back here certainly shy away from making a big deal of the fact. Most of the time, that is.
Jonathan Rundman is one of those rare exceptions. Hailing from Michigan's upper peninsula, Rundman has been tapping into simple, homespun, folksy nature of his isolated rural upbringing since his entry into the world of rock back in the early nineties. Ever since his first album, critics have been citing Rundman's down-to-earth lyricism, his simple, unassuming arrangements, the sweetly innocent, occasional reverential subject tone of his songs. All in all, it's his Midwestern sensibility that always seems to rise to the surface.
And just how well does Midwestern sensibility fit in with the world of rock and pop? I recently picked up Rundman's most recent release, 2004's Public Library end had the chance to find out for myself.
Smart Girls leads off the album, and happens to be the song that had hooked me in originally. There's a definite power-pop foundation to the song, what with its relaxingly solid drum line driving the song along and the ever-so-slightly sugary tang of the power chords in the rhythm guitar riffs that drape themselves across the song's framework. Rundman fills the vocals with sweet harmonies that lie somewhere between the Beach Boys and Steve Miller, and he shakes out the guitar solos with the same sharply energetic edge that Peter Buck brings to REM. Smart Girls sets itself apart from most other modern adult alternative pop songs, though, with its complete lack or pretension. While so much modern music steeps itself in cynicism, consciously or unconsciously, Rundman sings with the awed sincerity of the country boy visiting the big city for the first time. Just look at the opening lines of the song, with its earnest praise for the bookish, girl-next-door type:
♬ listen to me boys, and learn important things
benefit from wisdom that experience brings
I will be specific, I will be direct
when you look for love, look for intellect ♬
The song burns along on a slow fuse of relaxed power pop riffs, but there's something so unassuming and humble about it, that it just sucked me in. It's one of the few cases where rock music and sensibility really do work well together.
With this rather auspicious opening for the album, I looked forward an album full of down-to-earth yet spirited, energetic power pop. Perhaps Smart Girls set my expectations too high, but what followed just didn't do it for me.
The songs that follow, like Falling Down or Narthex are energetic enough, with solid (if somewhat standard) arrangements of electric guitar, bass, and drums. The music's focus ends up wandering aimlessly as the music progresses, though. At times Rundman and his band steer themselves towards the more solid realm of rock and pop with a heavy, steady beat and strong, layered guitar arrangements. In other moments, the songs head of in the direction of alt-country, aiming for a sense of charm and character in their twangy arrangements. The problem arises with how well the styles mix, or don't mix, as the case may be. Unlike acts like The Old 97's who seamlessly fuse a sense of rock rebellion with the down-home feel of a country bar band, or Lyle Lovett who has successfully merged country swagger with the eclectic charm of indie-pop, Rundman simply vacillates between his pop/rock and his alt-country sounds, never really committing to one or the other. With no clear decision of which direction the music should follow, there no definite sense of self that emerges in the music.
Being a sensible Midwesterner myself, I knew I couldn't dismiss the album so quickly, and I gave the album a few more listens. I ended up rather disappointed once again as I noticed just how repetitive the music feels. It's not just the same musical ideas that repeat over and over with little variation, but more unforgivably the repetition of the bland, uninspired lyrics in many of the songs. Look at the chorus of the slow, brooding, Springsteen-esque Second Language:
♬ when I wake up, I speak my second language
I speak my second language when I catch my train
I work all day, I speak my second language
I speak my second language and do it all again ♬
Or take The Serious Kind. Over a solid foundation of brushwork on the snaredrum and some languid slide guitar riffs, Rundman sings:
♬ we've got trouble, a whole lot of trouble
we've got the serious kind
we've got trouble, a whole lot of trouble
we've got the serious kind
we've got fear, a whole lot of fear
we've got the serious kind
we've got fear, a whole lot of fear
we've got the serious kind ♬
It's the monotonous repetition like this that sinks what could otherwise be some deep, thoughtful songs.
I did manage to stick it out long enough to find a few other bright spots, such as the spirited, energetic rockabilly of 747's or the poetic cold-war backdrop for the love story in Cuban Missile Crisis, one of better lyric jobs on the album. But the only other song that even comes close to the strong promise of Smart Girls is Librarian. Casting aside the vacillating uncertainty of rock music or alt-country, Rundman plays Librarian as a straight-up power pop tune, complete with cymbal rhythms in the drum line and tight, hook-laden guitar licks. Rundman even manages to pen some of the album's most interesting lyrics here, introducing the song's narrator with the words:
♬ when I was just a baby, before I could speak
I would line up all my letter block alphabetically
and now it's my vocation, my passion to assign
each decimal-numbered shelf to each decimal-numbered-spine ♬
All in all, Public Library clearly reflects Rundman's down-to-earth Midwestern sensibility. It never really finds its stride and fails to make it to the level of a great album, but I don't think we can blame its failings on the quiet, unassuming sense of sensibility. Nothing here is terrible, and there's an awfully strong album lurking underneath the surface of the music. The real disappointment simply comes in seeing those occasional flashes of brilliance buried and suffocated underneath the album's wishy-washy, uncertain choices and the bland repetition that characterizes so many of these songs.
Recommended:
No
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DrFaustus
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