J. Tillman joined Fleet Foxes last summer, after their Sun Giant EP had already converted many listeners into fans. Before that, he had been a solo artist for nearly five years, developing his own sound and identity on four limited-release albums. His voice blends so well with his bandmates and his drumming has just the right restraint that despite his absence from the liner credits, it's not difficult to imagine he's been with the band all along, lurking just outside the studio and harmonizing through the walls. From the first richly harmonized notes, Vacilando Territory Blues, Tillman's fifth album and first for Western Vinyl, only confirms that impression: Featuring two Foxes and a similarly deep-woods sound, the album may bring to mind the glacial songs of Damien Jurado, the subdued shimmer of Mark Kozelek's solo material, or the outdoorsy languor of Great Lake Swimmers, but it ultimately proves a strong, quiet complement to Fleet Foxes and, more crucially, the band's rougher, looser sound.
The only constants on these songs are Tillman's wounded vocals and acoustic guitar, which he alternately strums with percussive force or patient restraint. Other instruments come and go, other voices join his, but each of these songs sounds like it was written on and for a lone guitar. This is no surprise, but it is important: Even as Vacilando adds new styles and instruments to Tillman's sound, it draws a straight line to his previous output, which is sparer and starker. Compared to Long May You Run, J. Tillman and Cancer and Delirium (both from 2007 and both reissued digitally last year on Autumn Tone Records), Vacilando sounds positively bombastic, but then again, those albums would make Nick Drake sound like Marc Bolan.
Tillman continues to make virtues of slow and quiet, but here he finds new avenues to explore, using volume more liberally and enlarging his musical palette without losing the brooding, late-night post-buzz vibe. "Steel on Steel", a standout about the aftermath of a car crash, bolsters the crisp imagery and economical lyrics with mournful horns that give the sense of loss and regret an almost gravitational pull. Marimba and mellotron add tints of color to "No Occasion", and a mandolin and piano take turns with the central ascending theme of "First Born", as Tillman sings like a less granular Will Johnson. Beginning with a blast of discordant reed instruments that interrupts the album's brooding tone, "New Imperial Grand Blues" makes explicit the classic-rock influences that underlie all of his arrangements even as it suggests an experimental streak. The song rumbles menacingly, darker and crunchier than anything his day-job band has yet mustered. Sequenced immediately afterwards, the nearly lo-fi "Master's House", with its casual strums and blueslike structure, sounds all the more austere, revealing new contrasts and territories in his sound.
Between these two poles lie Tillman's stock-in-trade folk songs, which sound solemnly intense and subtly melodic. Neil Young set the template, but Tillman puts his stamp on every note, wringing bare-bones poetry from evocative couplets. Occasionally, he stumbles, as on the overlong, overbaked "Barter Blues", whose soundtrack ambience can't sustain its seven-minute length, but more often, he writes toward a type of epiphany most often found in midcentury short stories: "James Blues", about a lovelorn character haunted by bad dreams, ends with the observation "The universe makes more sense without a purpose," which sounds both gloomy and hopeful. "Laborless Land" makes an affecting chorus by repeated the word "daylight," which sounds all the more poignant following his ominous hints of "what I saw that blood-red morning." He never specifies just what he saw, and that lack of disclosure gives the song a dark, almost gothic flavor. Tillman's stories sound as elliptical as his music, as if the lyrics demand such sparse arrangements. "Everything moves so fast," he sings on "Steel on Steel", "leave no time to ask, does nothing last? Do all things pass, just ash to ash?" These songs whisper loudly to slow the world down, to preserve a moment and all its emotions, whether they're pleasant or-- more likely-- painful.
