Films that are perceived to say something important habitually bloat towards (or past) the three hour mark. Return to vinyl hasn’t dented interest in allowing albums to stretch and expand towards full CD capacity.
On his debut album for the Dead Oceans label, Greg Mendez offers endearingly melancholy salve for anyone who is struggling to cope with too much content and incoming data: seemingly immune to tunes that pass the three minute mark, and featuring plenty of offerings that conclude in under two, Beauty Land breezes through 14 songs in barely half an hour.
This could suggest an inability to develop ideas to their
full fruition, and there are times here when beautiful embryonic ideas
are extinguished criminally early: the heartbreakingly desolate,
keyboard-led miniature “Frog” (just ‘’please forgive me for all my
faults’’ delivered over the loneliest melody imaginable in a voice
cracking with regret) being an obvious case in point. Elsewhere,
however, Beauty Land manages to make a virtue of the urgent rush to move to the next song as quickly as possible that characterises the album.
Recorded almost entirely alone in Mendez’s home studio, Beauty Land
evidences the Philadelphia-based songwriter’s ability to craft
compellingly layered, melodically rich miniatures with the barest of
tools. The video for the misleading jaunty opening track “I Wanna Be
Pretty” finds Mendez venturing suburban streets in solitude in the
divide between late night and very early morning, surrounded by symbols
of cosily stable and secure lifeforms whilst decidedly detached from
them. The visuals provide a perfect shorthand for the wry yet heartfelt
isolation of the lyrics, which find the protagonist working a
low-prospect job (to fund a stubborn music habit, maybe) and getting
robbed on the way home late at night, ‘’when only people like me are
out’’.
The general vibe of downtrodden resignation, the
unobtrusively light-touch yet delicately ornate arrangements and
Mendez’s woundedly resonant near-falsetto voice can’t help but bring to
mind Elliott Smith. Whilst songs like “Everybody Wants to Be Your Friend
(Except Me)” certainly venture close to Smith’s terrain, the moments
when the songs are allowed more wiggle room to bloom and expand prove
that Mendez has a musical identity of his own. For evidence, see how the
initially plainly strummed “No Evil” sparks into a homespun symphony of
ricocheting vocal parts, or how “So Mean” gradually stretches out into
an understated slice of euphorically swirling chamber pop. More of this,
and Beauty Land would have been absolutely essential.
