Saying a record makes great background music is usually taken as damningly faint praise at best. Sure, the music sets a mood-- so what? But for something to fade gracefully into the scenery, it has to be finely crafted enough that nothing snags or jars. Unobtrusiveness isn't always a fault, nor is attention-grabbing necessarily a virtue. I realized this one afternoon last summer at a BBQ, where Vetiver's 2009 album Tight Knit was playing at low volume from another room, providing the perfect sonic wallpaper for the day: gentle folk songs drifting into not-quite-yacht rock-- wooden ship rock, maybe. The album didn't grab your attention so much as gently hold your interest, complementing rather than interfering. Paradoxically, half-listening to the album revealed something that giving it full focus did not. It was like some "Doctor Who" creature that you could see in peripheral vision but which disappears when you look directly at it.
Vetiver's new album, their fifth (and second for Sub Pop), pulls off much the same trick. This is part sound design:The drums are muted, often no more than a muffled kick pulse; the guitars are finger-picked acoustic or else electric with the edges slicked entirely off; and singer/songwriter Andy Cabic holds his vowels long and lofty, sighing his lyrics as much as singing them. It's also part songwriting: Cabic's melodies are impeccably understated, and his leisurely lyrics set an undeniably easy-going mood. This sort of thing has been Vetiver's lane since their anomalously freak-folky debut, and there's not much here in the way of either deviations or dramatic leaps forward; if Cabic and longtime producer Thom Monahan have tinkered with the band's sound, their improvements are subtle enough as to be imperceptible.
Of course, given time, the best background music insinuates its way into your foreground, and after about a week with The Errant Charm, a few of its highlights will work their way into a listener's head: the way Cabic's vocal traces the guitar scale on the chorus of "Worse for Wear"; the cruising JJ Cale vibe of "Ride, Ride, Ride"; the deck chair-ready guitar glide of "Fog Emotion"; the soft organ trill and backbeat to "Can't You Tell". Best of all is "Wonder Why", an upbeat and unreservedly catchy number, driven by bright guitar picking backed by piano, bobbing bass, chords that rev up to the chorus, and the album's most straight-ahead, snare-hitting drumming. Over the top of it, Cabic harmonizes and hums, world-weary and a little worried, but still sounding largely optimistic.
Presumably if Cabic-- formerly of dub percussionists Tussle and frequent touring sideman of Devendra Banhart-- just wanted to make an ambient drone album, it would certainly be within his powers, and it would probably be fine. But his songs as Vetiver, for all their breezy lightness, seem to aspire to something more like the spotlight, or at least the talking-stick spot at the campfire. The Errant Charm doesn't entirely succeed in that regard, but it remains a pleasant listen, perhaps just a bit too subliminally so for its own good.
