With their infamously hectic live show and small catalog that's been tantalizing but spotty, I never thought the Narrator wanted to be just another above-average indie guitar band. I just figured they had yet to realize their ambitions on record. With All That to the Wall, however, the Narrator have indeed recorded an above-average indie guitar record, and in doing so have probably made their most cohesive and listenable full-length yet.
Don't take that as backhanded-- there's no way to capture in the studio hoarse catharsis, ringing ears, collapsing floorboards, errant bodily fluids, saxophonists in pink bunny suits, or whatever other shit happens at the band's shows, and I'd guess this record is borne of that realization. It's not a question of lowering the bar; it's knowing the difference between a performance and an album. The basic sound of the band hasn't changed significantly, but the difference is clear right away: On opener "Son of Son of the Kiss of Death", the guitars are still winding and spidery, but the vocals have been refined considerably, their frayed and flailing yelp becoming more expressive at every turn. The stiff fingering of the verses shifts to a surprisingly catchy, straightforward chorus, with just a few keyboard notes poking through before they finally grind through some cacophonous bent notes in the outro. Even with that, they sound more patient, balanced, and focused.
No doubt that they're stronger songwriters now: anthems like "SurfJew" can stand up to rushed beats and sweaty deconstruction on stage as well as repeat listens on headphones. (Best I can tell, it's about a west coast Bar Mitzvah, but the band's lyrics have been largely nonsense and that trend continues here.) But more than that, they've integrated their previously rough edges and found ways to responsibly sabotage their perkier pop tendencies, presenting accessible songs with unusual production choices. "Son of the Son of the Kiss of Death" stops everything for a backwards-sucking string sound, there's a theremin-like keyboard drone in "Speeding up the Gang", and later tracks like "A Decade in Kentucky" utilize strange echoes and flanges.
The record's centerpiece is a Bob Dylan cover. If that surprises you, the song they chose will really throw you: "All the Tired Horses", which is given a faithful and somber reading. Not only does it show how far their singing has come, it also includes anachronistic production touches like heavily-reverbed Max Weinberg-style drum hits and the synthetic pluck of simulated strings, lending it a nostalgic but weirdly out-of-time quality. Funny that there's a gradual downhill slide after the cover, though there's a memorable staccato delivery in "Papal Airways", and a weary but impressively building melody on "Breaking the Turtle", one last gasp of the band showing what they're made of before the tired, almost pop-punk toss-off of "A Decade in Kentucky".
Armchair critics have long cited "All the Tired Horses" as a sort of commentary on the creative exhaustion Dylan was feeling at the time, a judgment based on the homonym present in the lyric, "How'm I gonna get any riding done" (substituting "writing" for "riding"). Given the more sluggish second half of this record, you could say the Dylan song signifies the Narrator's fatigue-- they did lose a drummer not long ago, and grabbed fill-ins from Russian Circles and Oxford Collapse to finish the record. But there's something endearing in how they present this on-the-nose version of an imperfect castaway with all sincerity. The Narrator sound better on record with less to prove, making imperfect pop out of their rough edges, and turning fuck-ups into hymns.
