From just about any angle, Marc Bianchi is a niche artist. Over the span of five albums and numerous singles and EPs as Her Space Holiday, he's worked within the confines of a bedroom lap-pop sound informed by big beat and an occasional dash of IDM while delivering often uncomfortably candid lyrics in a deadpan, nearly anti-melodic whisper. Post-Postal Service, it's not a real growth area. You're accustomed to a certain way of listening to Her Space Holiday, which is why the rippling, Marquee Moon-style major chords and free-to-be-you-and-me lyric of "The New Kid Revival" could initially be seen as a daft anti-piracy measure. If you nabbed it as an illegal download, you'd swear some joker had pulled a fast one on you.
In a Cloud Cult review, I used the term "unplugged Her Space Holiday" as somewhat of a joke about a style of music that couldn't possibly exist, but that's pretty much exactly what happens here. I can't vouch for what's gone down in Bianchi's personal life, but XOXO, Panda and the New Kid Revival is an album of sobriety and comfort-- "Used to think that being alone would somehow simplify my life," he sings on "The Heartbreak Moment", this from the author of "The Luxury of Loneliness". It's all relative, though-- "The World Will Deem Us Dangerous" follows a flower from a dead relative's grave to the desk of an uninterested crush while Bianchi alludes to mental illness and societal persecution. It's like the entire Eels discography distilled into four minutes.
But the most obvious turn is instrumental, as the strings that pad out Bianchi's simple, breezy tunes are pulled from the barn rather than the orchestra pit-- yes, the guileless banjo on "The Truth Hurts So This Should Be Painless" (okay, maybe some things haven't changed) isn't being played for laughs or "authenticity," and neither is the kazoo that pops up later. While the move to more traditional instrumentation and songwriting was likely a necessary move for Bianchi, it was also an incredibly risky one-- he's very much aware of the limitations of his voice, and on 2003's "Meet the Pressure", he likened criticism to asking a blind man if he knows that he can't see. It could just be one of those situations where everything sounds better when you turn it up loud, since the insistent double-tracking lends Bianchi a tart, nasal tone resembling Kevin Barnes kicked out of the theatre troupe or even Isaac Brock. If he's dealing in unfamiliar ground, it's no surprise that Bianchi is seeking clear guidepoints. It's hard not to hear "The Year in Review" (as well as "The Day in Review") as Bianchi's "Float On" moment-- fatalism passing for relative optimism-- even though its descending melody brings up a certain late-period Elliott Smith album (check the title).
But in other ways, XOXO still manages a lonesome, crowded sound. Whether it's the sturdy chord progressions, overstuffed lyrics, or just Bianchi's tendency to avoid with melodies with contours his voice can't match, most of XOXO is likeable, if not a little tough to parse. The gut-punch topicality of older songs like "Sleepy California" or "Girl Problem" is genuinely missed amidst the occasionally redundant wistful observation and the vocal lines that often veer to close to each other (many can draw similarities to the White Stripes' "We're Going to Be Friends"). Ultimately, in place of a holding pattern comes a new trouble-- Her Space Holiday, in its previous iteration, was divisive enough to be loved and it had an identity: Every one of their previous albums had a couple of duds, but in the vein of Jamie Stewart or Conor Oberst, imperfection was something of a package deal-- the drunken fight that unintentionally gets to the root of the problem. It's nice that Bianchi spends most of XOXO talking himself away from the ledge, but if he's going to stand out in a rootsy twang & twee field that's already bursting at the seams, it's going to take more than the Sarah Palin platter of brand loyalty and exceeding drastically lowered expectations.
