Deleted Scenes have put out two solid, well-received records and hit a couple of benchmarks their fellow D.C. bands surely envy*—*their 2009 debut Birdseed Shirt was produced by J. Robbins and they toured with Dismemberment Plan. But judging from their third LP Lithium Burn, that kind of success doesn’t ensure any kind of sustainable security or stability. In fact, Dan Scheuerman’s likely considered the possibility of being better off if Deleted Scenes straight-up failed: the core of Lithium Burn consists of songs that tacitly acknowledge the brief, teasing glimmers of hope, of getting close enough to a breakthrough just to realize how far away they are. During “Let’s Not Fix Everything At Once”, Scheuerman confesses, “I’m not giving up quite yet/ I’m out trying to make it pay”, and bringing in Brian McTear and Jonathan Low (The National, Sharon Van Etten) to produce puts a bold underline on his next lyric—“One last shot to make my way.”
On the one hand, this ain’t The Meadowlands—its quotidian struggles can't be expanded into a morality play on the music industry. Whereas the Wrens made it clear that “Everyone Choose Sides” when faced with the question of whether to call it quits in the face of humiliation and missed opportunities, there are no easy ultimatums to be found here, no shady record execs, no broken marriages, no callback to past songs. If you had no awareness of Deleted Scenes’ track record to date, it’s easy to hear Lithium Burn for what it is*—*an honest account of what happens when years of small, short-term decisions put you in a place where you really don’t want to be and it’s unclear how you’re going to get out of it. Most of Scheuerman’s lyrics can just as easily apply to someone who’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever be more than this damn accounting job.
That much is driven home by “Let’s Not Fix Everything At Once”; the title recalls a line from the National’s “Fake Empire”, which now is a distant memory from a time when that band could be considered an overlooked group of struggling, white-collar types rather than bards of that realm. But whereas Matt Berninger offered comfort and the sense that, eventually, everything would get fixed, Scheuerman takes a deflated tone over quietly thumping drums, stuck in a restless night doing inventory of his mounting problems*—*“I’m not paying off my loans/ I’m not saving up for a home/ I’m not doing what you’d hoped I would with the life I chose.” There’s only the slightest spark left in him, asking his partner to stick around for at least another year, as this relationship is the only thing that “makes him real", "real" ostensibly meaning "adult."
But maintaining that part of his life proves to be just as difficult; the surprising major-key piano modulations allow Scheuerman to keep a stiff upper lip during “Seasons of the Wire”, where a spiritual rut is blamed on a litany of mundane circumstances*—the G train, migraines, porn sites, and yes, marathon viewing sessions of "The Wire". What’s sadder is that at no point during Lithium Burn do Deleted Scenes sound like they’ve thought of an exit strategy—*the closing track “You Get To Say What You Want” offers sarcastic applause to people who challenge the status quo; they're seen as smug, not sympathetic.
In its stronger moments, Lithium Burn could pass for a follow-up to Dismemberment Plan’s ruminative, then-swan song Change that would engender less ill will than last year's Uncanney Valley. Deleted Scenes make effective use of breezy guitars, plainspoken vocals, and a lightly caffeinated rhythm section that acknowledges the shifty D.C. punk that came before it. Similar to “Come Home”, there’s also a song where Scheuerman tries to hash things out with his parents (“Tell Me a Secret”). And if it lacks for hooks, dour ballads like “Landfall” and “Caught in the Brights” linger like Scheuerman’s pervasive worries, McTear and Low’s spacious production capturing pianos and reverbed guitar leads bouncing through a sparsely filled club.
But while that makes Lithium Burn an honest album, many of those same qualities don’t necessarily make it compelling. There isn’t a lot of fight in Lithium Burn and it’s understandable, considering its emotional state*—*but it eventually feels trapped inside its own self-fulfilling prophecy. When Deleted Scenes aspire for more attention, their music suffers: the frenzied, wordless shrieks of opener “Haircuts/Uniforms” sets a properly anxious tone that gets sublimated throughout and when they revisit it on hyperactive lead single “Stutter”, the combination skronking guitars and gnarled vocal effects just sound like the most grating D-Plan song on every one of their records being played at once. While Lithium Burn is an easy album to empathize with, you wish it'd do more to make you root for the band; the more important difference between this and The Meadowlands is how Deleted Scenes can’t manage enough moments where their station of being overlooked becomes an injustice to the listener rather than an understandable reflection of a solid, unfashionable indie rock band that just never really caught a break.
