Opening your first album in nearly 20 years with a song called "That Time Is Gone" is either bracingly honest or immensely foolhardy-- or possibly both. On Falling Off the Sky, the dB's invoke their long-ago heyday and acknowledge that they'll never be young again. "Better wake up, wake up, wake up, that time is gone!" Peter Holsapple exhorts the listener over a modified Nuggets garage groove. Despite that disclaimer, there's a familiar depth to the guitars, which don't jangle so much as they slice and pop and rumble. It's both a fitting reminder that they were always more at home in the studio than on stage, where they could tweak and refine their sound endlessly, and a nod to that long-gone time, the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the dB's were the best North Carolina band in New York, sprouting from the ashes of Sneakers and moonlighting in Alex Chilton's band and R.E.M. The dB's' first records-- 1981's Stands for DeciBels and 1982's Repercussion-- mixed paisley-strewn mod rock with prickly postpunk, sunny West Coast harmonies, Big Star pop romanticism, and the jittery jangle that was then becoming a signature of Southern college bands.
After a handful of fine albums in the 1980s and one more in 1994, all of which were recorded under different lineups, the dB's went mostly silent, as the original quartet focused on various side projects and production gigs. In 2012, Chilton has passed and R.E.M. have broken up, but most of their peers, including the Feelies and Mission of Burma, have actually reunited. Rather than simply reliving past glories, the dB's are trying to create new ones on Falling Off the Sky. These songs may contain familiar nods to the past-- the members' tastes have remained constant well into their careers-- but they're approaching those influences from new angles and assembling them into new shapes. This is, naturally, their most grown-up album. The dB's capably make the case that these sounds can speak to middle-age contentment just as they once conveyed youthful discontent.
The transition is smooth, so they're not embarrassing themselves. But in the case of the dB's, the happiness of men in their 50s turns out to be less compelling than the angst of men in their 20s. Lyrically "The Wonder of Love" and "Before We Were Born" tend toward the settled and the saccharine, and musically "Far Away and Long Ago" sounds like something you'd hear in an Athens elevator, at least until the drums come in and distract from the chintzy strings and staid classical guitar. Among so many mushy sentiments, Will Rigby's "Write Back" is a pleasantly surprising standout. He pairs a clever epistolary concept with a playful sense of self-deprecation, and his strange, mewling vocal turns the repetitive chorus into the album's liveliest hook: "I'll never reply to your reply to my reply to your reply to my letter." It's the sound of a man out of touch with technology, but also out of his depth in even the most casual exchanges, yet he conveys the romantic alienation with a sly humor.
Perhaps more than any other song on Falling Off the Sky, "Write Back" hints at why we care that a band has reunited so long after its glory days: At their best, albums like this one have the potential to define a new perspective from which to view the world, one that can throw a band's older material into sharp relief. But the dB's don't redefine themselves as defiantly as they once did, so the best moments are the most specific ones, like when they sing about listening to Delany & Bonnie on "Collide-oOo-Scope" or lament a friend's failing health on "She Won't Drive in the Rain Anymore". But there's never quite enough of the everyday on these songs, which they almost admit on "Send Me Something Real". After making the title plea, however, Holsapple undercuts the yearning with too much self-seriousness: "because I don't remember how it feels to be free and pure." That angst-- experienced by musicians and listeners who've been consigned to the reunion circuit or the Collector's Edition treatment-- could be a compelling topic for a comeback album, but Falling Off the Sky misses the opportunity to explore that fear of obsolescence too deeply. Which is a shame. These songs are loud enough, but they need more dB's.
