The Modern Skirts' 2005 debut, Catalogue of Generous Men, presented them as facile young power-poppers, short on vision or grit but long on effortless melodicism. Cresting on the "O.C."-pop wave churned up by the likes of Phantom Planet and Rooney, the Athens, Ga., band's guileless hummability went a long way towards overcoming its lack of originality. The Skirts of 2005 were a tuneful act for sure, though not exactly one you'd take all that seriously, even in their frequent melancholy moments. It seems likely this presumption of mop-toppery got under the band's skin in the intervening years, because its follow-up, All of Us in Our Night, is noticeably darker and less immediately accessible than its predecessor. It's also not as good, falling into the familiar trap of a young band striving for substance and consequently getting in its own way, unnecessarily upping the degree of difficulty and undermining many of the elements that made its music enjoyable in the first place.
That's not to suggest these guys became free jazz dadaists overnight or anything, yet many of the more easily abused traits of maturing artistry show up here-- oblique lyrics, a more sober vocal delivery, songs that seem to go in circles rather than a straight line. Too much of the album feels bloodless and hermetic. It starts with "Chanel", a worrying laggard of an opener with weird wordless background vocals that sound borrowed from TV on the Radio's cover of Pixies' "Mr. Grieves". The sex-and-drugs reverie "Soft Pedals" at least has lyrical specificity on its side, icky as those lyrics may be ("You got on top and we both got off again"). Still, it does little to pick up the tempo, which can also be said of the following track, the spaciously puzzling "Chokehold". Things don't really get moving until "Radio Breaks", and even then this heavily piano-dependent band is only maintaining a roughly Ben Folds-ian pace. "Face Down" boasts a nicely rippling riff, but it introduces another tendency that frequently hamstrings sophomore efforts, namely the urge to write about pop life and the road, manifested here in the backhanded plaudit (perhaps self-inflicted), "you're famous in a small room." Such tunnel vision seems also to inform "Coversational", the Third Eye Blind-ish (not necessarily an insult) "Eveready", and especially the Mike Mills-produced "Motorcade", with its invocations of money and amphetamines. "Mrs." (who "misses a good thing") feels like the most intriguing lyrical sketch, but at a slight three minutes that's all it has a chance to be: a sketch. Athens has a proud history of disparate bands-- from R.E.M. to Olivia Tremor Control-- who challenged lyrical and structural conventions in interesting ways while still managing to deliver pleasurable pop. Were the Modern Skirts content to replicate their debut and continue making sad-sweet tunes to soothe the bum trips of Bulldog fratties after watching Matthew Stafford throw another laser-guided interception, they'd already be in fine shape. All of Us seems instead to suggest a desire to transcend this modest scope, which is admirable for sure, though it's also clear the band will need some time to grow into the role.
