The last time Maria Taylor released an album, Pitchfork was in a zingy sort of mood, classifying her "somber, gooey" efforts as the sort of stuff you'd see abetting some tender & verbose moment from "Gilmore Girls". Two years later, and her latest offering of somber goo finds itself stuck in the middle of poignant scenes from a slightly more popular television drama, "Grey's Anatomy". A recent episode actually utilized two tracks from Lynn Teeter Flower. "Clean Getaway", featuring Taylor's frail croak and the sparse acoustic veneer listeners come to expect from her work, was a perfect fit for its associated scenes of antiseptic regret and recrimination. The full-rock-band moves of "Good Start", on the other hand, clash with the poignant moments it was meant to soundtrack, just as Taylor's sad-sack ruminations on the track slap clumsily against the instrumentation that tries its best to coax some catchiness from the song's melody. It's hard to keep toes tapping, though, when you sound like Eeyore's mother on an ether binge.
Suffice it to say that if you're a fan of Taylor's first album, then you're going to find similar stuff on Flower. Whether she's giving the rhythm section a cigarette break, trying to approximate the sound of an anesthetized New Pornographers, or adding the same sort of pseudo-dancey Casio flourishes that have colored her work since the first Azure Ray album, Taylor never fails to instill the same sense of inescapable inertia throughout. Unless you're drinking gallons of the street team Kool-Aid, repeated exposure will only make each subsequent listen even more of a chore, and whatever charms her music might possess get washed away. A voice that might sound haunting or weary in a charming fashion at first quickly becomes a mewling sigh afraid of its own volume. Her melodic knack is apparent, but there's only so much morose mid-tempo pop one can take, and it'll take a lot more than a fleeting dalliance with some Mellotrons to cover that up. Once upon a time, this sort of bait-and-switch was accomplished thanks to her Azure Ray partner, Orenda Fink. As lugubrious as Taylor's music might seem at times, Fink's own despondent dolorous haze made her partner in crime seem like a spastic pixie. Without Fink to play Sadder Cop to Taylor's own Sad Cop, the jig is most definitely up.
Given the alternative to the M.O. that's presented on this album, though, I'm all for Taylor turning her modest niche into a shallow grave. "Irish Goodbye" presents a peppier version of Taylor's block-rocking beat manifesto, but it gets waylaid by an awful rap (indie style, of course) that would probably turn even the most ardent backpackers against the stuff. If that's what this record could have been, then by all means, Maria, please trot out more deathly songs about clichéd devil dreams and self-recriminating passive-aggressive relationships (and feel free to close with some clip of a younger you singing the name of the album over and over in an awkward and winning fashion). However, if given my druthers, I'd rather have an album full of songs like "The Ballad of Sean Foley", Taylor's collaboration with Saddle Creek sugar daddy Conor Oberst. Though Oberst is officially given a co-writing credit, the song's word-per-minute rate, and its folky obsession with naming landmarks and cities, makes me think he should be given at least three-quarters credit. His presence as a back-up singer also flatters the song, as well as Taylor's performance. Taylor doesn't necessarily snap out of the tortoise-like torpor she's painstakingly established throughout this album, but for a few minutes, you can see some light at the end of the tunnel, and imagine what it would sound like if she finally did.
