Creative people have long been in pursuit of that ephemeral quantity they call "life experience"; this is why we have things like gap years, the Peace Corps, and hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's also the fuel driving We the Common, the fourth album from spirited folk-popper Thao Nguyen. Including her three records with the Get Down Stay Down and a 2011 collaboration with Mirah, the prolific Nguyen has been involved in so many projects that she's spent most of her 20s on the road. Last year, when the rootlessness of the touring life was starting to get her down, she went out in conscious search of that elusive life experience-- or, in her words, "I wanted to try to be a real live person, rather than just singing songs about them." So she settled in San Francisco. She didn't write much, and instead did some deep thinking about her life's direction. She made an effort to be a part of her community, spending time working with an organization that advocates for prisoners' rights. Then, she did what most creative people in self-conscious pursuit of "life experience" end up doing: she used it to write some new songs. For a record she'll inevitably tour. The cycle of rootlessness continues.
But on We the Common, her most sharply written record to date, she's well aware of that irony. Its 12 songs are smart, sometimes piercingly self-aware meditations on the creative life, teasing out the tension between life and art, the individual and the community-- and perhaps most of all-- security and restlessness. "We love some strangers every night," she sings with mock-flippancy on "We Don't Call", which is as much about the emotional stamina required to regularly pour your heart out on stage as it is the havoc that lifestyle can wreak on long-term relationships. Like most of the songs on We The Common, the arrangement is nimble and the instrumentation is varied but never overcrowded-- a vibraphone tiptoes around the vocal melody and horns accent but don't overpower the emotional nuances of her lyrics. "Bye bye baby, I'm going to work/ Chase myself all over the earth," she sings later, with a subtle tinge of weariness.
We the Common's best songs are its most dynamic. "City" is driving, percussive, and dotted with distorted guitar riffs that touch down unexpectedly, like lightning bolts. The chaotic and kinetic "Move" seems to pick up a few tricks from Nguyen's pal Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs-- lurching at a midtempo stagger that suddenly explodes into one of the record's most satisfying moments, when Nguyen shakes off her composure and screams, "Oh, to be free!" From a distance, it would be too easy for those with the oft-diagnosed allergy to uptempo banjos and vibraphone solos to dismiss Nguyen as "quirky," but closer listens even to her earliest records show that her lyrics and sound have always packed an unexpectedly blunt punch. John Congleton's excellent production emphasizes the jagged edges and negative space, making each sound pop as vividly as he did on St. Vincent's Strange Mercy.
And speaking of indie marquee names, the song on We the Common liable to generate the most chatter is probably "Kindness Be Conceived", a sprightly and predictably pastoral duet with Joanna Newsom. (According to Thao, the two met somewhere that I assure you is not a soundstage for a "Portlandia" sketch but an actual place in the world: "a Virginia Woolf-style farm paradise where women writers get their own cabins and write all day and meet in the evening for dinner.") Pleasant as it is, it's not one of the album's most memorable songs, and the irrepressible quirk in Newsom's voice only highlights the biggest issue with We The Common: Nguyen doesn't always have the personality to sell these songs. Her voice has a tendency to go a little monochrome, and this causes some of the slower numbers, like "Clouds for Brains" and "The Day Long", to fade into indistinct and unmemorable hues. On "Kindness", both vocalists sing the same melody over the top of each other, but it's the magnetic charisma of Newsom's that draws you in.
Still, Nguyen's most quietly affecting vocal comes in the last song, "Age of Ice", another track that seems to address the emotional life of the wanderer. It's a song about survival-- the necessity of acting tough and building up defenses ("What of all the stone I invented/ To coat my hands and my face"), but it also contains the possibility of a thaw. "I remember you with a feeling or two," she sings with a hint of self-deprecation, as though she's wishing to feel and experience more. But ultimately We the Common shows that "life experience" can happen anywhere-- even in a cramped tour bus or on a brightly lit stage. Nguyen may have spent her youth unconventionally, but that doesn't mean she's not "a real live person." Her songs are stuffed with the wisdom and strengths she gained from her years on the road-- resilience, hopefulness, and self-reliance. "Rest and be strong, wash and be clean," she sings in the powerful last seconds of "City". "Start a new year whenever you need."
