Gary Wilson's first album, 1977's You Think You Really Know Me, hinted at a hidden world. Recorded in his parents' basement, it offered the kind of skewed take on saccharine AM pop best made by one lonely, sunlight-starved individual. The few who heard it at the time probably had the same feeling I did when I first heard Ariel Pink, a Wilson fan whose music shares similar stylistic obsessions. When Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label unearthed Pink's The Doldrums in 2004, its bulging creativity encouraged fantasies that there was much more where that came from.
In Pink's case, fantasy turned out to be reality-- the vault he's uncovered since The Doldrums has been richer and more interesting than expected. Things haven't turned out as well for Wilson. You Think kept a shelf life via sporadic reissues and pop-star name-drops, but it took 27 years for Wilson to release another solo record, 2004's Mary Had Brown Hair. It's a good album, but mostly remarkable for how much it sounds like You Think without matching its predecessor's bold singularity. Now, with Electric Endicott, Wilson's well is beginning to run dry.
Not that there aren't some good songs here. But the ratio of quality-to-disposability is not very high. About a third of the tracks play like throwaways-- either ultra-generic piano jazz (Wilson has apparently played with a lounge band for a while) or squiggly, aimless ambiance. While such abstractions merged nicely with his curious tics on You Think, here they're just filler, devoid of tension and unable to tie the album together or give it much texture.
The better songs do have their moments. "In the Night" and the title track both hit a loopy breathlessness that makes them work as odd earworms. And Wilson's love ballads about surname-less women like Sandy, Kathy, and Karen have a nicely unjaded outlook akin to paeans by Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston. But those two are better at turning phrases and adding self-aware depth to their seemingly naïve tunes. Johnston especially can convey raw emotions that seem unavailable to Wilson, who often sounds like he's more in love with his melodies than the girl he's singing about.
Part of my ambivalence toward Electric Endicott comes from not sharing that love. Glittery synth-pop in the Steely Dan/Todd Rundgren vein is a tough sell for me. I find it hard to break through the cheesy Casio-preset associations and the obsessions with technical craft and formal figures that aren't interesting enough to warrant such commitment. Take Wilson's "Where Are the Flowers?", whose irritatingly rote chant listing the days of the week is more like kid's homework than compelling music. Still, when this sound is done with edge and freakiness, it can be a unique surprise, which is exactly what You Think You Really Know Me was. Electric Endicott is too often the opposite-- predictable and numbing, even when it's good.
