From Lou Reed's New York to Brian Wilson's California, the local color and street-level details of place is a cornerstone of popular American music. On their debut album, the Constellations have entrusted themselves with the formidable task of redefining a city that's already been famously rendered by artists ranging from Little Feat to OutKast. Not only is the revolving-door collective an amalgam of players from Atlanta's rock, soul, and hip-hop scenes, their album Southern Gothic (released independently in 2008 before receiving this major-label reissue) was envisioned as a travelogue to Atlanta after hours, presenting a nocturnal netherworld of sex, violence, and intoxication. Now, I should note that, aside from a couple of layovers at Hartsfield-Jackson, I've never been to Atlanta. Unfortunately, after listening to Southern Gothic, I still don't really feel like I have.
Recorded back when the Constellations were mostly a studio collaboration between singer Elijah Jones, Gnarls Barkley producer Ben H. Allen, and multi-instrumentalist Devin Donnelly (the band has since expanded into a eight-man group), Southern Gothic wastes no time in establishing its ambitious scope with the psychedelic scene-setter "Setback", which frames Jones' streetwise, Beck-ian babble with splendorous synth lines and a monster go-go groove. It's an impressive opener that effectively sets up the magic-realist intent of the project-- but it's a balance of grit and grandeur that Southern Gothic rarely recaptures.
The Constellations' Southern-rock/gospel/electro/soul melting-pot sound feels too temperate and polished to properly complement the unsavory narratives playing out in the songs, which often come off like the work of a mildly eccentric bar band that wants you to think it's wild and dangerous. (You know something's amiss when Asher Roth's fake-Slim-Shady routine on "We're Here to Save the Day" pops out more than the muted Cee-Lo monologue on "Love Is a Murder".) And Jones' attempts at character-sketch vignettes are undermined by pat barstool philosophy like, "You've got to take it to the limit," and, "If you really want to live, you gotta be ready to die," or tired metaphors comparing life's struggles to the changing weather ("December"). Even worse is how "Felicia" squanders its tough Hammond-organ strut on a cringe-worthy chorus that actually pays its prostitute protagonist the Chad Kroegerian compliment of being "so sexy when you're working on your knees, girl."
But the Constellations are nothing if not shameless, willing as they are to directly invoke the granddaddy of observational underbelly storytelling, Tom Waits, by appropriating his 1976 crazed-salesman spiel "Step Right Up" as the basis for a rubbery nine-minute disco workout. The fact that Jones brazenly adopts a low-end Waitsian warble actually benefits the song, allowing him to convey the dive-bar scenery of Atlanta's Clermont Lounge with a detached sense of humor, rather than trying to oversell the seediness. And as "Step Right Up" reaches its conga-funk climax, you get a genuine sense of the late-night abandon the Constellations were trying to capture all along. Perhaps on future recordings, the Constellations' current full-band formation will yield more moments like these-- songs that feel less like brushstroke caricatures of a place and more like lived-in experiences of one.
