Peter Matthew Bauer's Liberation! marks his first time singing, writing lyrics, and leading a band; it’s also the first project he’s worked on since his tenure as bassist and organist in the Walkmen, who, in Bauer’s own words, are on a “pretty extreme hiatus.” Taking those milestones into account, Liberation! is a bold stroke on a blank canvas, with songs that celebrate freedom and fear in the same breath, two emotions that definitely crop up when someone’s moving on in life.
Bauer’s musical palette is broad and unique, expanding past the sounds of his previous band: he implements polyrhythmic island music on the the title track, the sounds of slow 1960s beat bands on “Shiva the Destroyer”, and true American heartland rock on “Irish Wake In Varanasi (For Big Pete Devlin)”. The opening track “I Was Born in An Ashram” doubles as biographical fodder—Bauer was, indeed, born in an ashram—and as a means of setting up Liberation!'s theme shambling along the path to personal nirvana. He sings about religion and the “freedom” it affords as if he were taking part in a classic-rock exorcism, which is evident in his singing voice, moving between a Kurt Vile-esque drawl and a pursed-lip Mick Jagger croon. Accordingly, the music occasionally takes on the lo-fi pluck of Constant Hitmaker and the swagger-psych of Their Satanic Majesties Request.
Orthodox Hinduism, Scientology, Christianity, and religious hokum all receive lashings from Bauer’s sharp tongue. Rather than possessing the snide reproach of a message-board atheist, Bauer comes across as someone choosing to embrace mystery as its own religion, as terrifying as that may be. “Only you can convince yourself,” he sings on “Shaved Heads & Pony Tails”, which ma ybe the first indie rock song about a śikhā; the album's true mantra comes on the final track, where Bauer exalts over a two-chord stadium-ready tune, “You are the chapel, and everything is wonder." Elsewhere, he lets his voice go on album closer “You Are the Chapel”, dialing into the talk-anthem spirit of Bruce Springsteen, while underneath the drums thunder louder than any other instrument featured on the album. It’s a great closing anthem made even better by an errant Oasis diss: “I see you looking like Oasis/ why does anyone want to look like Oasis?”
Liberation! is most successful as a shaking off of Bauer's relative anonymity: he paints himself as a funny guy, an American wanderer, and someone eager to expel what’s been boiling underneath those bass parts for the Walkmen for so many years. Perhaps that’s why this album sounds like such an impulsive, energetic mishmash that all comes out in a fury, as Liberation! doesn’t feel dwelled-upon or over-wrought. There are points, like his off-handed “ooo’s” at the end of “Latin American Ficciones”, that could stand to be more filled out, and sometimes the bare-bones production seems too small for the ideal size of the songs. But the ramshackle spontaneity is Bauer’s charm, as the songwriting compliments the heady spiritualism of his words. Liberation! gives Bauer a voice, and the mystery of where he goes next is just as exciting for us as it is for him.
