It's not fair to conflate art with its artist, or to assume that writers are always talking about themselves. As "Dumb Luck" opens Dntel's latest, with Jimmy Tamborello singing solo about how success is just a fluke ("it's dumb luck that got you here"), we shouldn't necessarily assume he's feeling sorry for himself over the gold-selling crossover smash he enjoyed as one half of the Postal Service, a project that began at the end of Dntel's last album as a singular collaboration with Ben Gibbard called "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan".
But even as the pair traded subtlety for preciousness when launching their collaboration upon the teeming masses of postal workers, marketers, and prime-time drama soundtrack coordinators, Give Up hit its mark more often than Dumb Luck does. Of course, those are two completely different bands; it's a little more fair to compare this album with his last, 2001's Life Is Full of Possibilities, as the two are so sonically close. Gibbard's not here, but guests like Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis, Grizzly Bear, Lali Puna, and Mia Tai Dodd do contribute, lending vocals to Tamborello's unpredictable electronic pop. The tracks here have the same small surprises-- ear candy fighting with open spaces and dead air, clicks and pops parrying with naked and vulnerable emotions. But the guest's contributions are bit more incongruous this time around, and where Possibilities was haunting and desolate while being quite cathartic, Dumb Luck simply mopes through its duration.
The opener and title track shifts the focus to Tamborello's voice, and the song really is an acoustic ballad at heart, though there's plenty of drum pads and distorted winds howling over it. Grizzly Bear's contribution is barely noticeable to the largely electronic and heavily-treated "To a Fault", and "I'd Like to Know" reminds the most of Dntel's earlier work only because of Valerie Trebeljahr (Lali Puna)'s voice, whose icy ambiguity remains perfectly matched to Tamborello's coy, suggestive sonic palette. Not quite so with "Roll On", where Tamborello seems to act as a backing band rather than a collaborator. The finger-plucked guitar and plaintive speak-sing sounds like a cast-away from Lewis' recent album with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat, with clicks and hisses that threaten to spill over the composition like an overstuffed sitcom closet as she cracks wise and faces hard facts (and clichés) about unrequited affection.
"Rock My Boat" skirts the line between Dntel's downtempo magic and soggy trip-hop, not helped by obvious acoustic plucking and inane lyrics ("where angels get their wings/where babies get their names" and similar tripe). Fog's appearance lends to the more sparse and adventurous "Natural Resources", with oscillating tones and the unexpected crooning of woodwinds, but Andrew Broder barely sings his was through its clumsy lyric. Conor Oberst is handed the "Evan and Chan" of the record with "Breakfast in Bed", with one bare, disorienting keyboard loop like a hearing test administered by a drunk that puts all the spotlight on his vocals. Oberst's performance is restrained and surprisingly palatable as he sings about the aftermath one night stand, but aside from a few golden details we can rely on him for (cleaning wine from coffee cups, or attentively making "sure you're breathing with a hand up to your nose"), the terminally heartbroken act was a little more believable than his sensitive gigolo.
While some of the album's songs are terrifically cloying, I can't call it a disappointment; it's more a case of diminishing returns. You could fall on the axiom that a happy song is much harder to write than a sad one, but Tamborello's already proved himself wildly successful at happy songs with the huge crossover success of Postal Service. Perhaps it's a case of the Postal Service's broad strokes communicating more than the finer brush of Dntel. Happiness is a far more complicated emotion on Dumb Luck; when it comes, it's fleeting, bewildering, and undeserved. But from a musical standpoint, I'd rather hear Tamborello fake his way through sounding happy than sitting dumbfounded and complaining when the real thing shows up.
