Too Late to Die Young features the unlikely pairing of London's Departure Lounge (a band led by Tim Keegan, former member of Robyr Hitchcock's Egyptians) and überstoned French trip-hopper Kid Loco. Though the wisdom of the collaboration at first seems suspect, it turns out these guys knew what they were doing. Most of the credit is due to Kid Loco, who apparently left his ego behind when he assumed the producer's chair. There are some lovely gurgling electronic flourishes here and there, but nothing makes a bid for clubland, and Kid Loco clearly based his treatments on what their songs required, rather than going out of his way to leave his mark. The album is warm, thick and lush, but firmly rooted in the guitar pop tradition.
With Loco steering the songs someplace interesting, the x-factor is the songwriting, which turns out to be first rate. The record's first step is a mighty one: opener "Straight Line to the Kerb" is such a killer song, there's no way the rest of the album could upstage it. Starting with a cloud of fluffy electronic noise, the tune turns into melancholy British guitar pop equal to the finest XTC, complete with the kind of trumpet that adds that extra layer of sadness to certair Belle & Sebastian songs. It's among my favorite songs of the first half of 2002.
After that auspicious beginning, the dip in quality is slight but noticeable, as Departure Lounge draw from a variety of sounds and styles, with generally positive, but rarely brilliant results. Keegan's laconic delivery on the midtempo "King Kong Frown" is a dead ringer for Lloyd Cole, and "I Love You" is a wide-eyed Spectoriar extravaganza with a vocal arrangement indebted to Brian Wilson. The instrumental "Tubular Belgians In My Goldfield" offers Kid Loco the rare indulgence, and he transforms a ho-hum guitar instrumental into an epic, proggy slice of trip-hop that could be a Psycence Fiction B-side.
"Tubular Belgians" segues into "Be Good to Yourself," a bouncy pop song with a background of wailing free-jazz horns a la Radiohead's "The National Anthem." "The Good Side" is a solid country-ish duet between Keegan and Sing Sing's Lisa O'Neill, rather in the vein of Mike Johnson's pairings with Tiffany Anders. Mr. Hitchcock himself shows up for "Coke & Flakes," a bluesy, noisy, psychedelic shuffle that is ultimately directionless and boring. The spare, affecting acoustic balladry of "Silverline" shows that Keegan's gifts are melodic, not rhythmic or instrumental. The album is about a quarter filler, but the songs that hit on Too Late to Die Young make the tedium worth sitting out.
