Karl Blau comes from the same island hamlet as Phil Elverum, the enigmatic rocker behind the Microphones and Mount Eerie. Beyond their crunchy idyllic roots, living among the ferryboats and the evergreens, they share a unique way of seeing. One finds in their work a hallucinatory vision of the Pacific Northwest halfway between "Twin Peaks" and "Northern Exposure": Warm but weird, by turns cheerful and dark, equally alive to the natural and supernatural, and pleased as punch to tread the rim of civilization. Part of the younger generation of K Records renaissance men, the two collaborated on several under-the-radar releases as members of D+, a band that broadened the Olympia label's tradition of shaggy, sardonic, post-hippie quirk.
Last year, Blau put out the softly electronic Dance Positive, where he folded 10 songs written by Bret Lunsford, a cornerstone of both D+ and the region's indie-rock titan Beat Happening, inside his own shabby-chic arrangements. What we got was a melancholy cross of folk motifs and Casio textures. Faithful to his DIY sensibility, it nevertheless proved a confident leap forward for Blau, whose previous record Beneath Waves (2006) wandered with mixed results, as his urge to experiment with diverse instruments and registers could, depending on the song, either smartly embellish or rudely interrupt the introspective moods and words.
Nature's Got Away attains a better balance of cohesion and chaos. Taking less risks than AM, Blau still offers the same tattered arrangements and battered delivery that made Dance Positive such a warmly imperfect record; Blau arguably packs some of the best work of his career into the back half. And it is clear that, as he tames and grooms his unruly aesthetic, he has been sliding into a plot between the Microphones and Smog. It's hard not to feel Bill Callahan's dry winds of irony in "2 Becomes 1" and "Mockingbird Diet". The latter song turns an Animal Planet vignette into a poignant ballad, relying on fuzzy, shivering guitar melodies and jangly percussion to lend the Darwinian lyrics a sting of resignation.
Even "That's The Breaks" and "Make Love That Lasts" have that touch of the cold-blooded old times, forging bittersweet moments from here-and-there backup vocals. At the same time, the airy delicacy of "Stream of Ganders"-- evident not only in the spacious production and roaming composition, but in Blau's wispy, breathless singing-- remind us that he is still a disciple of Phil Elverum. (Though we get the sense that Blau's sonic debt to Elverum has been gradually paid down since the Beneath Waves days.) With the plastic, loitering tones of thrift-store keyboards, this song is also the obvious bridge from his past work to his present.
In the trek from Point A to Point B, Blau has drawn from eclectic sources. He nodded to A.A. Milne, the creator of Pooh and relatively unsung poet, on AM and Japanese esotericists like Tori Kudo, of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, on this one. Here the rainbow of left-field influence even extends to Allan Kaprow, whom Blau channeled to describe his creative method, explaining that "the director of a musical piece may find that the less heavy handed one can be, the more one can approach hands free and even getting out of the way of a 'happening.'" Nature's Got Away retains the light touch of a seasoned auteur, but make no mistake: Blau's strange and humble presence is deeply felt. And he brings to each song a little whimsy, woe, and a deceptively intricate way to mash these sensibilities together.
