Listen up record shop employees. Winfred E. Eye is a band, not an individual. Well, it was an individual at one time, the grandfather of frontman Aaron Calvert, but as a military man, Winfred got sick of being called Private Eye so he changed the family name to Calvert. I digress. This Winfred E. Eye is a band, so if I show up at your store, this CD better be filed under "W" not "E" or there's going to be trouble. You don't want another episode like when I found Jethro Tull filed under "T" and went all Bruce Banner on some poor clerk's ass.
Just like their name, the genre categorization of Winfred E. Eye requires a slight pause on the listener's part-- kneejerk pigeonholing, after all, makes a pigeon-knee'd jerkhole out of you and me. To most casual listeners, the hazy late night vibe this Oakland-based six-piece creates is likely to be hastily dismissed as a bad Tom Waits impersonation. There are similarities-- in fact, similarities not unlike Songs: Ohia's Jason Molina and Will Oldham. But as with Molina, listening beyond the surface reveals a storyteller on a different path.
Besides, Calvert's voice doesn't just bring Waits to mind-- he also evokes Tindersticks' Stuart Staples, Ron Sexsmith, and even Dr John, delivering his words in a kind of soulful, mumbling speak-sing. And his lyrics are, shall we say, less Fellini-esque than Waits'. There are no dwarves doing cartwheels in the background of these songs, no mad scientists or one-eyed fortune tellers, though there are plenty of down-and-outs. But, in general, Calvert's lyrics are much more personal and direct.
For instance, "Rinding the Rails", vague though it may be, seems to be about a France-bound post-grad on the Eurail fantasizing about some girl across the aisle. The fantasy, however, turns dark as Calvert sings, "Whores can teach/ This might be true/ I've seen the depths where love festers." Then there are three songs that appear to be about his dog ("Dog", "Dog's Brother", and "Bury It!"), and the hopelessly forlorn "Keep the Bed Warm", which, with its refrain "coping with coping," could only have been drawn from personal experience.
As for the five other members of the band, they do a great job of creating a world where it's always dusk and the sea air is blowing in, like a breezier Black Heart Procession. The best song on the album is the closer, "Monte Rio", which pits a distant drum loop, an accordion drone, and a simple, repetitive acoustic guitar riff against Calvert's chorus, "Remember what I said/ Don't forget it/ Forget what I said/ Forget it," and his most self-loathing fare, "No one wants to touch you... and it's starting to sink in."
Still, as songwriters go, Calvert has a long road to travel before he's at the top of his game. There are presently any number of artists blowing minds in this medium, and A Bottle, A Dog, Some Milk, A Bottle is certainly a pleasant outing, it offers little more than promise of a brighter future for this band.
