The Curtains have gone from zygotes to embryos. But no sex organs yet-- Chris Cohen, the band's only permanent member, shares the seasick, stop-and-go pop and guileless, virginal voice of Asthmatic Kitty label mates Half-Handed Cloud, Shapes and Sizes, and Sufjan Stevens. In the Curtains' press photos, Cohen strikes a shy pose, shoulders curled in, with his eyes unable to lock with the camera's-- hand him a banjo and it's one of Stevens' press photos. Cohen left Deerhoof after they released The Runners Four, the band's best album, and a record with his fingerprints all over it. It wasn't bitter-- the band released an EP of covers to commemorate his departure. It just took three albums to make the Curtains Cohen's own.
The Curtains have three previous albums that each sound less focused than Calamity. Flybys (2003) and Vehicles of Travel (2004) were recorded with different musicians (including Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and Satomi Matsuzaki) and consist mostly of song fragments. Taken in order, these albums sound like childhood, the band's wordless fragments growing into talking, feeling songs, able to hold their heads up on their own. Still, Cohen works with fewer words than a Stevens song title. He writes with fewer instruments too-- each song uses Cohen's compressed guitar sound, piano, drums, and little else. Still, Cohen plants sounds of the 60s and 70s all over Calamity. "Go Lucky"'s piano chords may sound like a reference of a reference (Cat Power's "The Greatest"). But "Green Water's" palm-muted bass and clean lead guitar invoke the Who, while "Brunswick Stew"'s tricky little beat is On the Corner-era Miles Davis.
Cohen's ribbon-thin voice sounds naïve but keeps a sort of experienced acceptance. "Don't try to follow me now/ Green water swallow me up," goes "Green Water"'s determined chorus, repeated over staccato guitar down strokes. He sings "I'll float above," stretching the word "above" higher and higher, as if it were a performative (the equivalent of Superman's "up, up, and away!"). But then the word's melody sinks down again; he's gone.
The empty spaces let the listener in on Cohen's process. Calamity looks like mere outlines of what Deerhoof does, but sink below and, well, it's not so much "look at the negative space" or "it's the notes he's not playing, maaaan" as seeing that each song's so delicate, each horn line or piano tinkle so deliberately placed, that pulling one away would make it collapse. The simplicity does get simplistic at times. "World's Most Dangerous Women" could have doubled its chords to a solid four, so Cohen wouldn't need to fill the space with tuneless vocals. Half the song's arrangements are too malleable and accommodating, and need a firm slap on the rump to save them from innocuousness. Growing pains, though. Calamity shows Cohen struggling to balance his twee pop tendencies with experimentation, the same thing Deerhoof mastered on The Runners Four. On Calamity, he's learning to do it by himself.
