There's a scene in the film Searching for Sugar Man in which a reporter asks Rodriguez, a songwriter claimed as the "lost Bob Dylan," whether he resents missing out on royalties as a "bigger than Elvis" superstar in South Africa while his American debut was overshadowed by generation-defining records like After the Gold Rush and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Sunglasses firmly in place above his signature unflappable grin, Rodriguez says, "It's the music industry. There are no guarantees." He's right, and eventually he gets his reparations with stretch limos, white carpets, and yearly sold-out shows in Cape Town. But his Zen attitude is still frustrating. Doesn't he hate Bob Dylan just a little?
We get more of an answer from singer-songwriter Chris Porterfield, whose overshadowing Voice of a Generation is Justin Vernon. In an interview with Rolling Stone's Steven Hyden, Porterfield said he was proud of his former bandmate in Wisconsin folk collective DeYarmond Edison; but he let his Minnesota niceness lapse long enough to feel "gross jealousy" toward Bon Iver. As Hyden noted, the feeling is only human: Both sprang at least somewhat formed from the same fertile Midwest territory and traffic in meditative, solo acoustic folk, but Vernon's meteoric rise to fame has since eclipsed Porterfield's empty open-mic nights and stints opening for better-known bands-- including Bon Iver-- under his former pseudonym, Conrad Plymouth.
Now rechristened Field Report, Porterfield continues to be dogged by headlines like "Chris Porterfield is Field Report (and used to be Justin Vernon's bandmate)." Other than his one-time confession to Hyden, Porterfield has publicly shown no signs of resentment toward Vernon. In fact, he embraces the relationship, recording Field Report at Vernon's April Base studios and even drawing inspiration from him, saying in the same interview that he admires Vernon's continuing loyalty to the Midwest. "He made me think that someone not living in a major city, who writes stuff that he believes in about stuff he went through, that people want to hear that."
Lyrics like "This bitterness was killing me all along/ I am not waiting anymore," the loosely analogized "I spent eight long years working on my screenplay" ("I Am Not Waiting Anymore"), and "I just want to speak the truth/ I have not been able to" ("Captain Video") belie those warm and fuzzy feelings. It's not like Porterfield tried to conceal the somewhat autobiographical origins of his lyrics any more than he's hidden his last name behind an anagram, but he wrote some conspicuously analogous situations that reveal a rawer nerve than he's disclosed in interviews. Was Porterfield seething during the long years he spent working in an admissions office while his friends were getting nominated for Grammys and bringing back dad rock? Probably, but that's just the music industry.
One of the differences between Porterfield and Vernon is that the latter has a story and the voice to tell it, even if you can't understand what he's saying half the time. Field Report, while eloquently assembled from bits and pieces of Porterfield's former projects and influences, doesn't bring anything like that to the contemporary Eau Claire folk tradition. Opener "Fergus Falls", for example, was actually a Conrad Plymouth track. This time around, Porterfield shows restraint, replacing the piano with banjos and sinking the drums lower in the mix. It burns slowly and efficiently, from the hollow opening twangs to the rousing, closing canon. He could have drawn from Smog's A River Ain't Too Much to Love, which Porterfield admires for its "clean but small" guitars and "detailed but universally nostalgic lyrics."
Bill Callahan is all over this record, from the endlessly repetitive chords to the naturalistic "vistas of buckthorn and tamarack" in "In the Year of the Get You Alone" to Porterfield's deadpan talk-sing. Field Report has got the detailed and nostalgic part of Callahan's lyrics down pat, namedropping over 100 proper nouns into the 15 songs that were whittled down to the album's 11: Doris Day, Glen Shirley, Dom DeLuise, JonBenét Ramsey, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. But unlike Smog and "Fergus Falls", they're excessive. Callahan can say something like "special underwear" and people will listen, but Porterfield sounds like he doesn't actually know what he's talking about. There are times when it works, like the juxtaposition of Dahmer and Liberace on "Incommunicado", which alludes to Porterfield's current home of Milwaukee while playing to his strengths in multi-part harmonies.
Mostly, Field Report sounds a lot like his old band. When listening to an album like Silent Signs, you can hear the vestiges of Megafaun's telltale banjo twangs and early Bon Iver's lightly brushed drums, but you can also hear how both bands have naturally evolved into autonomous, quite distinct entities; so distinct that Porterfield felt out of place on a recent tour with Megafaun, his former musical collaborators. When Field Report deviates from DeYarmond Edison's retrospectively entry-level folk, however, it's jarring. Bon Iver's unabashedly luscious synthpads float like dry ice across the bottom of "Taking Alcatraz" and "Evergreen", filling the spaces between unadorned guitar strums better left unsaid.
And there's Field Report's conundrum: He doesn't quite do enough to differentiate himself, but when he does, it sounds forced and unnatural. That might be due to the music industry or timing-- it's as if Mike Heidorn decided to have a solo career after Summerteeth-- but it's more likely due to Porterfield's still-developing talents as a solo artist.
