Joel RL Phelps writes songs about regular people suffering through the direst situations: wrong-intentioned wars, social upheaval, crippling poverty, not to mention the everyday trials of romantic fallout and family illness. But rather than inspiring Springsteen-ian story songs, these predicaments add a darkly existential drama and gravity to Customs, Phelps' fourth full-length with drummer William Herzog and bassist Robert Mercer as The Downer Trio.
Thematically, the songs on Customs are all linked by Phelps' quest for salvation through portraying his characters' plights: Everyone wants to be saved. The album begins with the steel drum-inflected "From Up Here", one of several songs that address the sacrifices of war and the friction between honor and horror: "When the night is over and I'm in the light," Phelps sings, "remember me to no one says I wouldn't fight." "Kelly Grand Forks", perhaps the most hopeful track on the album, depicts romantic disappointment with a steely eye, and "Mother I'm Waiting" hovers bedside while a parent dies: "Mother, I am waiting for you to be whole/ You don't know who I am/ But you know who I am."
If Phelps' lyrics are occasionally cryptic or so humorless as to make the songs feel airtight, he compensates with the generous scope of his mission: The redemption he seeks is rarely solely personal, and is sometimes large enough to encompass a family or a community. In the Seattle-set "Lie for the Day", for example, he assails the hollow promise of dot-com prosperity, which enriched the region's coffers but not its soul: "All of us staring down the Green River" ask to be kept "safe from the darkness below."
What enervates this quest and saves it from being merely academic is the music. Like Phelps' previous full-length, 1999's Blackbird, Customs has a grinding sound that pulls from his grunge roots in Silkworm as well as from a particular brand of roots rock, which, on songs like "Be First!" and "Kelly Grand Forks", recalls the Midwestern muddiness of Uncle Tupelo. Like a blaring live show, the album is simultaneously intimate and off-putting, as it constantly demands and disrupts listeners' attention. Occasionally, however, it's a little bit too sludgy and overwrought, and the Trio indulge some ideas that probably worked well live but don't translate to the stereo. Most egregiously, "Shame" culminates in more than two minutes of false endings, which grow increasingly tedious with each chord.
But the most powerful instrument on Customs is Phelps' voice, which seems to hold deep reserves of emotions. When he strains for high notes, his voice blares almost unmusically, revealing a vulnerability behind the thick guitar sound. On songs like "Be First!" and the third verse of "Kelly Grand Forks", his voice seems to detach from the music and rumble on its own. Fortunately, Herzog and Mercer don't even flinch at these vocal crescendos, but remain steady and imperturbable throughout Customs, like two friends helping a drunk stumble home.
There's something intriguingly self-critical in Phelps' vocals: His straining signals his frustrations not only with the futility of the dismal dilemmas he describes, but also with the limits of music to convey such emotional extremes. He constantly searches but never discovers a thematic push-and-pull between the words and the notes, which turns the album's stark weaknesses into compelling strengths. It is through such sins that he comes closest to redemption-- but, thankfully, never close enough.
