For their first album since 2001's drastically underrated Sea to Shining Sea, Sam Jayne and his Love as Laughter mates have ratcheted down their expansive guitar onslaught several degrees, closing the roof and fastening all the bolts as they cruise their sound brazenly towards classic rock orthodoxy. It's an approach obviously not without risks, as the virtually quirk-free Laughter's Fifth settles nearly its entire weight onto Jayne's songwriting shoulders. Fortunately, however, it's a load Jayne sounds as if he was born to tote, and here he delivers what is undoubtedly his tightest, most satisfying batch of songs to date.
It's certainly a far cry from the disjointed, garagey fray of such early albums as The Greks Bring Gifts or #1 U.S.A., although even back when L\A\L was essentially Jayne's lo-fi solo project his fondness for foursquare Keith Richards chords and distorted Crazy Horse jamming crept itself in like jimson weed. Now, with the able-bodied assistance of bassist Brandon Angle and drummer Zeke Howard, Jayne truly has a band with no interest in doing things by half-measures, and Laughter's Fifth veritably rings with barstool drawls, mutton-chop riffs, and burly Creedence choruses.
Though raucous tracks such as "Every Midnight Song" and "Idol Worship!, Idol Worship!" contain glimmers of L\A\L's grungier past, gone are the noisy Sonic Youth-inspired deformations that peppered albums like Destination 2000. Here Jayne's songs build their muscles through old-fashioned sweat and craftsmanship rather than feedback and distortion, with an unerring sense for when to pull back and when to pile on. On "Dirty Lives" the group marries its agreeably crunchy guitars to handclaps and a bouncy, almost new-wavish bassline to create album's most immediately addictive song, while the meditative "Pulsar Radio" constructs its passionate melodicism atop rich organ swells and chintzy low-tech bossanova beats.
For the most part, though, Love as Laughter simply settle into the loose, rib-joint grooves of tracks like the opening "In Amber" or the wry "I'm a Ghost" ("I float throughout your house at parties/ Flirting with your guests sometimes...I'm a real nice guy for a ghost") with such an infectious sense of rumpled delight that one is generally able to overlook the music's many ancestral debts. Though certainly not a head-turner as a vocalist, Jayne commits to these tracks with an amiable enthusiasm, and his guitar playing is deceptively stellar. The floorboards do sag a bit beneath the generic "Survivors" or the oddly anti-climactic closer "Makeshift Heart"-- middling cuts which slow the album's overall momentum-- but these rare missteps are not enough to dim Laughter's Fifth understated, majestic glow.
