You can't accuse Nik Freitas of not putting his best foot forward. His fourth LP (and first for Conor Oberst's Team Love imprint) opens with its sparkling title track-- a burst of mellow California sunshine featuring shuffling percussion, breezy guitar work, and Freitas' easy, warm voice. Its finger-picked guitar arpeggios are reminiscent of those from Nico's poignantly Germanic version of "These Days", but they re-imagine that song's brittle bones as a robust foundation for an upbeat vocal melody that gently rises and falls. It's not just a summery pop gem, though; buried beneath its lackadaisical pace and elegant piano bridge is lyrical gravitas. Despite its deceptively sweet sound, it is riddled with darkness and uncertainty-- there's a reason almost every line starts with the words, "I want to know." Sadly nothing else on Sun Down is quite as good.
Freitas, an L.A.-by-way-of-Visalia singer/songwriter wrote, performed, and recorded everything on this album himself in a home studio that he lovingly created piecemeal via Craigslist. So, despite his album's effortless vibe, Freitas has obviously taken great pains with his work. He, like his inland Cali colleague Jason Lytle (of Grandaddy), has turned a lifelong Beatles fixation into impeccably arranged modern pop. (Check out the "Rocky Raccoon"-style piano jaunt "All The Way Down".) But for someone who used to photograph skaters for a magazine as aggro-named as Thrasher, most of Sun Down seems so laid back that it's practically asleep. Like a mainland Jack Johnson with a vintage piano, Freitas seems to only write in one mid-tempo dynamic, and his cozy salve of a baritone is almost too soothing, so much so that it threatens to lull listeners to sleep.
"Sophie" wants to be a bluesy Ryan Adams rocker, but with its out-of-place horns and middling lyrics, it doesn't have quite enough fire. (Say what you will about Adams, but his heroines have bigger, more dramatic problems than being mopey and needing to "find some way to smile.") Spare piano ballad "What You Become" gets the intimacy right-- you can almost hear Freitas' fingers press against the smooth ivory keyboard-- but because it is so repetitive and lacks any clear hooks, it falls flat. And though "Love Around" is weirder and more majestic than the rest of the record-- it's built on layers of ghostly atmospherics worthy of The Virgin Suicides soundtrack and fills its hefty sound out with chunky drum fills and a churchy-sounding backing choir-- its main vocal melody meanders so aimlessly that it, too, is rendered unmemorable.
Sun Down ends not with a bang, but with a whimper, leaving listeners with "Shhhh", a song that, even in its title, urges restraint. And perhaps that's Freitas' biggest problem: His songs are too quietly controlled. His arrangements are admirable-- on the album closer his whispered sibilant sounds melt over an organ that buzzes in the distance, lapping at the edge of a rolling piano line-- so if he could just learn to indulge a little, to give in to an anthemic chorus or explore dynamic differences, his songs would be worthy of his pristine production.
