This could be the hardest review I've ever had to write; not because the music presents any significant descriptive challenges, it's just the first time I've ever been unsure of who I'm writing about. I mean, it's not every week that you receive a new CD by Creeper Lagoon, only to be suddenly told by the band that they're about to change their name to Painbirds, only to have them realize that it was already claimed by some alt-country band and, rather than finding another Sparklehorse song to name themselves after, revert to their original moniker. So, Creeper Lagoon it still is, until another e-mail tells me otherwise.
But the confusion is oddly appropriate-- Creeper Lagoon always struck me as a band with a bit of an identity crisis, punted around from roster to roster (the Dust Brothers' Nickelbag imprint, Dreamworks, the Arena Rock Recording Company) like a reliable but unloved utility infielder. Their history is one marked by bad timing, emerging in an era when WB teen-soap music supervisors were still cutting checks to Paula Cole instead of Death Cab. The band's winsome 1998 full-length, I Become Small and Go, massaged plaintive, post-Pavement songwriting with burbling, Dust Brothers-grafted techno-sonics, though not flagrantly enough to beat the Postal Service to the electro-emo party by five years. Then, as per indie rock rite of passage, Creeper Lagoon made an over-produced, underperforming major-label debut, Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday, which dropped into the pre-Strokes alt-rock void of early 2001 and took the band down with it; by year's end, co-founding multi-instrumentalist Sharky Laguana was forced to assemble an entirely new line-up. A low-key EP (Remember the Future) for Arena Rock arrived in 2002, and it seemed for a while as if the Creeper Lagoon only appeared in second-hand CD shops and as a "Related Artists" link for people doing online Beck searches.
But even if the name stays the same, Long Dry Cold attempts a clean break from Creeper Lagoon's cursed career trajectory: Opener "Henry Ford" begins with startling analog synth-tones before yielding a sunshower of Manitoban acoustic-guitar glitches and Rachel Lastimosa's processed, blissed-out vocal sighs. But while these amoebic lullabies bear scant resemblance to the Creeper Lagoon that emerged almost a decade ago, its Sunday-morning psychedelia was anticipated by Remember the Future tracks like "Kisses and Pills", which closely followed the slackadasical strums of Pink Floyd's "Fearless". Long Dry Cold works from a similar stoner-folk base, but constructs it with the click of a mouse rather than the pluck of a string; acoustic guitars and hazy harmonies may be the most prominent elements here, but the multi-layered splendor of tracks like "Jimmy Robertello" render these most familiar devices as refreshingly alien sound forms.
Long Dry Cold's 13 tracks appear in a uniformly dreamlike blur that can work to the album's detriment; aside from "Henry Ford"'s impressive opening salvo, the sequencing seems random and haphazard, establishing little in the way of track-to-track tension. You also wish Laguana and Lastimosa would treat their vocals less as texture and poke their heads through the haze more often (as the late-set charmer "Nothing as It's Going to Be" is brave enough to do). But in a world where Nada Surf commands respect 10 years after being written off as an alt-rock one-hit wonder, surely Creeper Lagoon-- new name or no-- have earned their chance at a second coming.
