The bouncy bass and twanged-out country slide of "Desert Skies," the Beachwood Sparks' gleeful opener, sent one key question coursing through my headphones and into my mind: "Why isn't Robert Schneider's name all over this record?" Amazing though it may be, the answer is simple: he's not involved. Turning the collage-ridden artwork over in my hands, I see no "Robert" or "Schneider" listed in the credits. I see butterflies, but no elephants. And the only "6" I can find is in Sub Pop's P.O. Box number.
Even as I write this, I question my own literacy and sanity. "Desert Skies" sounds too shamelessly wrangled from Elephant 6's "too country-ish" outtake pile for it to not be related. I'm actually surprised the album isn't credited to a band called the Apples in Rodeo. Maybe it's the pastoral and escapist lyrics that caulk the deal most solidly: "Desert skies kept me dry from the city rain/ The stars poked holes in the sky." I mean, was I or was I not ragging on Great Lakes for similar lyrics about three months ago? But derivative and ultra-twee as this song may be, I just can't bring myself to dislike it. Like "Seems So" did for the Apples' Tone Soul Evolution way back in '97, "Desert Skies" hooks you solidly into the Sparks' comfortably non-insurgent and spaghetti-free western atmosphere.
In typical fashion for this pedigree of pop music, the Beachwood Sparks lean inexplicably hard on some of psychedelia's uglier crutches. Both "Ballad of Never Rider" and "Singing Butterfly" plug songwriting gaps early on in the record, and each spends about two minutes on half an idea. In attempts at texture or creativity, the band employs backwards loops and gurgling synths on these tracks. But these sounds only serve to place the Beachwood Sparks on some far-westward leg of another band's mysterious and magical tour. And fear not; the "ba-ba-ba" quotient is filled handily on "This is What It Feels Like," a Beach Boys throwaway that the Wilsons would have been wise enough to actually throw away.
"Sister Rose," however, finds the Sparks getting back to the business they're best at. Its Hammond organ and simple, punchy guitar combines with a lonesome, travel-weary lyric. Tasteful slide guitars even fuse Sloan with Marty Robbins for a manic pop moment or two. Later, the album slows to a mosey through "New County," a tired, hopeful ballad that might have seduced us through the middle of Beck's Mutations (an artist they've fittingly opened for).
It's just that pace that protects the Beachwood Sparks' credibility. Whereas E6-ers have notoriously flogged the cheap irony of embedding downtrodden lyricism into upbeat pop tunes, these guys get down more emotionally than musically, and manage to mean it. Lines like, "Deep down inside, I thought I'd find/ Something more than the same canyon ride," strike chords of withering honesty when a patient tempo allows that twang of high-E to burrow into this bleached skull of a song.
Sub Pop and the media alike have admitted to the derivative nature of the Beachwood Sparks' output without shame; comparisons as far-flung and high-falutin' as Gram Parsons and Buffalo Springfield do hold water. Nicer, though, is the fact that if current pop music is a race through a desert, the Beachwood Sparks are beating a certain collective of elephants to the shimmery oasis ahead.
