An upright bass-playing torch singer? The gist of Nat Baldwin’s music is more interesting than his membership in Dirty Projectors, the selling point his name has most often generated for much of the last decade. But by himself, or with any number of high-caliber collaborators, Baldwin is a singer/songwriter who employs his upright bass in much the same way as most people stuck to that tag use a piano, a guitar, or even a cello—to form the musical foundation for tense, impressionistic tunes. His fluttering, agile voice, capable of falsetto crests and valley-deep dives, only adds to the intrigue.
As distinct as Baldwin’s approach seems, though, his music has typically fit into predictable indie songwriter circles. The movement of his voice, for instance, recalls that of lead Projector Dave Longstreth, particularly given how Baldwin condenses and stretches syllables during wild rhythmic runs. His light timbre suggests both Andrew Bird and Owen Pallett. In the past, however, he’s been able to veer left of such stylistic kin through impressive atmosphere (the enormous natural reverb that bathed 2008’s Most Valuable Player) or unexpected stylistic changes (the Elliott Carter-conducts-free jazz paroxysm that punctuated 2011’s People Changes).
But on his latest, In the Hollows, Baldwin falls far into a quagmire of the expected, not only with vocals that take no new chances but also with a cast of collaborators that, however accomplished, scans like a cliché. Otto Hauser, for instance, is a brilliant percussionist, but his résumé of appearances—Vetiver, Devendra Banhart, Marissa Nadler, Vashti Bunyan—suggests that Baldwin is trying to pigeonhole himself stylistically. And then there’s the three-piece string section, lifted from New York ensemble yMusic, whose members have worked with the National, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, and Arcade Fire. Their contributions to In the Hollows sound wonderful, captured in warm, high definition in a proper Rhode Island studio. But this quintet ultimately feels flat and safe, rendering a picture that’s very pretty but remarkably similar to a pleasant watercolor you’d find hanging above the bed in a mid-prized hotel.
If you were to read the liner notes for In the Hollows without actually listening to the record, you might assume that the music is fraught with worry, a document of extreme existential awareness given poignant shape. (Baldwin, after all, wrote the bulk of In the Hollows while training for his first marathon, a period that often pits the trainee against his or her own human frailty.) “Light a match to erase a lifetime leading here,” Baldwin offers during “Knockout”, a song that pits eternal perseverance against the fact that few things last very long at all. And on paper, “Cosmos Pose” is a sharp, short examination of the torture we endure to approach some arbitrary idea of perfection: “Sweat it out to make the weight/ Needles stuck in every vein.”
But on tape, “Knockout” is practically buoyant, the grimace of the bowed bass and slapped drums lifting into a kind of hollow comfort. Cloying strings extend beneath Baldwin’s vocal, pulling tight like a safety net—which he clearly needs, since he sings the word “fucked” with the hesitation of a teenager cursing in front of parents for the first time. “Cosmos Pose” aims for high drama, with Hauser’s percussion responding to the foreboding call of the bass. Still, Baldwin seems to shrink from the weight of his own words, his voice tempered and tame even as the words he sings reveal crisis after crisis.
Time and again, the arrangements and performances here seem to treat their subject matter like familial black sheep, shuddering at the anxieties they propose. “Half My Life” is borne of a nightmare and mid-life despair, but it’s as affable as a Disney score. “The End of the Night”, one of two solo numbers here, sets itself up as the record’s soul-baring centerpiece. But even as Baldwin sings “I don’t know if it’s weakness or strength/ Just know that I need something to go for,” his diction is overly precise and polished, as though he were reading through a written script at a wedding’s dress rehearsal.
In the Hollows never feels lived-in, or more generously, part of the reality Baldwin has found and written into these songs. The exception comes with the title cut, the record’s biggest production and the most anomalous and audacious pop anthem of Baldwin’s career. Its words are, again, loaded with feelings—namely, the sense that all the enthusiasms and experiences we collect are simply sideshows during our own march to oblivion—as Baldwin lets his voice break only to pull it together, the strings tracking beneath him like a nervous heartbeat. “Even strides mark my path for the first and last time,” Baldwin sings, his tone a wonderful mess. In this moment of honest, human admission, he flashes above the quotidian company that this record keeps. It’s a riveting flash of inspiration—too brief to renew the album, yes, but good enough to reiterate that the upright bass-playing torch singer remains more than a mere sideman.
