On 1997's In Place of Real Insight, Karate made an intelligent, straight-ahead rock album that borrowed the stop-start cadences and tired loud-soft dynamics of D.C. rock, and filtered them through a grad student geek-chic sensibility. And it worked. The resulting music was rough-edged but musicianly, sounding kind of like the Warmers after a half-year of music lessons. Geoff Farina's effete, lilting vocals might have come across as just plain annoying in any other context, but the earnestness of his delivery along with the album's unhurried, lounge-core feel, and the punchy guitar tone Farina coaxes out of his Fender gear worked. Like, synergy, man.
1998's The Bed is in the Ocean took Karate down a new path. The album was like your friend's hairbrained scheme that you agree to go along with, if only because the last one worked out well. And again, it worked. Bed smoothed over the abrasive elements of their previous album, employed more complex chord changes, and garnished it with meandering, jazzy guitar lines. Many of the songs incorporated "jammy" interludes that narrowly evaded corniness on the merits of their execution, a feat in and of itself. But it was a balancing act that worked precisely because of the precariousness of the proposition, and not despite it.
Which brings us back to the album at hand. Unsolved is a jazz album. Whether or not it's an "authentic" jazz album, or just three rock guys playing jazz make-pretend, I couldn't tell you. My knowledge of jazz guitar begins and ends with having read the name Django Reinhardt somewhere, once. But, does it matter? The drummer uses brushes on some songs, distortion is scarce, and the progressions sound damn jazzy. Gone is the sugar that once made the medicine go down. It couldn't even be called jazz in rock clothing.
And it doesn't always work. The album's second track, "The-Lived-But-Yet-Named," comes across, both musically and lyrically, as scathing parody. Unfortunately for Karate, it isn't. Consider the following lyric: "How much will the Leitmotiv sway to compensate for our fallow-yet-vigorous play?" Can you imagine a context in which that line wouldn't sound completely pompous? Yeah, neither can I. And that's because there isn't one. The fact is, certain language is just ill-suited for song lyrics. The old Geoff Farina sounded like the sort that might steal your girlfriend, then come back later in the day to cart off all your old college textbooks. The worst lyrical moments of this album paint the portrait of a guy emasculated by excessive studying, in dire need of an extension on his dissertation so he can go get some sun and air.
On the third track, "Sever," Farina makes a passing and pointless reference to cultural critic Raymond Williams that, instead of enhancing this otherwise good song, adds an unnecessary and unsightly pedantic touch. The same song, however, marks one of the album's rare incursions into rock turf. After the opening jazz-cum-'70s-buttrock riffage and a few jazzy verses, it delves into a prolonged instrumental midsection that pays homage to Black Sabbath. In a good way.
"One Less Blues," the album's longest and, perhaps, strongest track, opens with dissonant, gently-picked guitar over an ominous bass-line. At one point, a blues/jazz solo gives way to delay-drenched guitar that eventually circles back to the '70s jam-rock feel of "Sever." Karate ties these segments together seamlessly into an evocative whole.
Its missteps aside, Unsolved is both good and daring. It shows Geoff and company as the versatile, gifted, and skilled musicians and songwriters they are. Perhaps, the strongest case for it is that Karate goes for broke whereas fans would have been satisfied by The Bed is in the Ocean II. In doing so, Karate made another rewarding and compelling album that forces the listener to hear them on their terms.
