On their fourth album since 1997's self-titled debut, the Anacortes trio D+ still consists of Beat Happening's silent partner Bret Lunsford; Microphones nature boy Phil Elvrum; and my favorite ex-oyster shucker, Karl Blau. Promising! Although last year's Mistake was somewhat slight and uninspired (sometimes reminiscent of the tossed-off air of Beat Happening's self-titled yellow album), I had hope for Deception Pass: Elvrum seems to grow more ambitious daily, Beat Happening were often able to squeeze hooks from stones, and Blau's Clothes Your I's surprised the socks off me just a month ago. Instead, Deception Pass-- named for a narrow band of water separating Washington's Whidbey Island from the mainland-- is a skeletal, less rocking, and more Lunsford-centric Mistake (in a couple senses).
The first track, "Skin Me", is paint-by-numbers love-rock reminiscent of a few too many seven-inches purchased solely because they came out on a label I trusted: listen twice, file with the rest of that forgettable international pop overflow. More painfully, on the eponymous "Deception Pass", Lunsford's a dead ringer for Kermit the Frog. I dare you to block out the saccharine harmony of "Rainbow Connection" as he warbles, "The water's too cold, I know where you've been, the water's too cold, I know."
When D+ are less Kermit/more Silver Jews, the seas get friendlier. "Blind Spot" is a catchy pine-needle pop song with a good politico-fairy tale lyrical turn: "I voted for the wrong whore/ I'm paying for the wrong war/ Mirror says we're fairest of all..." On "Kill the Messenger", Elvrum's drums made me dote on "Bad Seeds" or a primitive Velvet Underground jam-- and everyone harmonizes over the chorus into a final minute of la-la-la's, rat-a-tat drums, and Blau's swooping, airy backup.
Unfortunately, the less compelling 50-second "I Don't Owe You Anything" is awkwardly embarrassing poetry: "Song is like a medicine... meta sin... meta sun/ Fill the groove of Edison... let us in... let us sin." "Sound" offers interesting instrumentation redolent of Peter Jefferies' everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink approach: tapping, something like sandpaper, and the repeated line, "I want to plant a sound." Nice. "No Charge" is basically "Advice to the Graduate" for the seafaring. (Whoever thought David Berman made such a lasting impression?)
So, Deception Pass does have its decent moments. But things go incredibly wrong when "Camptown" rolls around. Here, Brett and a piano remind us of that bourgeois mustached Snowman from the Rudolph Christmas special. It's of the Ernest Goes to Camp school of poetics. The mega-chirpy "Blame-a-Holic" could make even a stoic cringe: "It's not me me me me me/ It's all you you you you you..." And on the final track, "We Could Do Anything", things disintegrate into Queen-as-interpreted-by-early-pork-roll-egg-and-cheese Ween. Oh me oh my! If I could do a play-by-play of "We Could Do Anything", you still wouldn't understand the unbearable badness of its 25 minutes. In the spirit of completion, here's a bit:
There's rain, rustling paper, maybe a water stick. Then we get a hand-clapping Blind Boys of Alabama campfire round: "You got the upper hand when you up and died on me." The rain thing reemerges. Pause. Silver Jews. Rain stops. Rain starts. It's fucking water torture! A guitar. Creaky gate. More rain? Radio hiss! Dials! People going between channels! Then there's a distorted voice singing about hell and pain. Computer voices bleeping about a hell mouth and somebody saying, "Don't fuck with the dead." The opus ends with Casio drums and a chilled-out breeze: Martin Denny after a KMFDM monsoon.
Maybe D+ had extra studio time or decided to make a statement transcending the rest of their oeuvre? Hell, that's what Eddie does with Rimbaud in Eddie and the Cruisers, right? But it drove him crazy. Maybe this baroque ending is the deception of the title! You've made it from one end of the gorge to the other when all of a sudden, in comes the deus ex machina of Greek tragedy: Trent Reznor on a swinging cable starts a pallid avalanche and sinks your battleship. Everybody hurts!
