Amandine is a geographical conundrum. Start with their second LP, Solace in Sore Hands, and try to pick the region of the American mainland Amandine calls home. Opener "Faintest of Sparks"-- with its sinister banjo rail and hard-lined persistence that together recall the "The House Carpenter"-- makes its writer seem like a Southeastern Americana immigrant, moving somewhere in the Appalachians on the heels of a bitter breakup and an introduction to Harry Smith. But then there's the earthen imagery of "Better Soil" and its major-chord acoustic jangle, bolstered by a maladjusted fiddle and clanging piano. Mellencamp is from Bloomington, right, and that place is an indie rock nexus? But so are Athens and Seattle, and "Silver Bells", all strident strum and stuttering drums, makes Amandine sound like it spent half a decade camping with the Shins outside of Sub-Pop's window.
Here's something surprising, though: Amandine is a four-piece from the Southern tip of Sweden, and they're fronted by Olof Gidlöf. Not John, James, Sam, or Joe-- Olof. And as charming as it may seem in theory for a band to explore the connections between American roots music and its Scandinavian counterpart, Amandine does so without a strong sense of self. Solace in Sore Hands sounds exactly like another faceless album about distance putting pressure on stretched heartstrings. Gildöf occasionally seems optimistic for his future, but his misery and the circumstances he laments-- war, small towns, traveling careers-- are his preferred muses.
In one sense, this resembles the approach of the band's 2004 debut Leave Out the Sad Parts, but, sonically, Amandine is bigger now. There's a tightly controlled veil of electric feedback on "Faintest of Sparks", and "Our Nameless Will" splits its choruses and verses between plucked banjo and overdriven guitar paired with big, languid rock drums and bass, respectively. By those terms, though, every piece of Amandine's discography has hitherto been only another point in making Gidlöf's laments a little more dramatic, a little bit louder. Such excuses only go so far, and here, regardless of the band's past, the climaxes and crescendos are rushed, pre-emptive, and undeserved. On "Chores of the Heart", Amandine goes straight for the throat, springing from a one-guitar, 35-second intro into a loud first verse, complete with a plodding rhythm section and a howling organ. But there's little other excitability. Still, the guitar somehow manages to believe Gidlöf when he concludes, "We've been wading in water so dark/ Now we're drowning in the chores of the heart."
Gidlöf is writing about the same motif of impending heartbreak he's mined for three years now, but he still doesn't own it. David Karsten Daniels, who shares the Fat Cat mantle with Amandine now, has based both of his albums around one breakup: The first, 2004's independently released Angles, was grief-stricken but undecided. It felt as if Daniels was still too sad to make a sustained, articulate statement. But this year's Sharp Teeth was a bold move, its arrangements-- Dixieland funeral marches, distended crescendos, painfully quiet brooding-- proclaiming that Daniels had finally conquered his hurt and used it to his advantage. Gidlöf lacks the conviction to direct his troubles into either strong songs or fodder for his clearly capable band. His three-shades-of-grey writing opens the door for any old arrangement that will do, and the band generally mirrors its principal writer, taking the tired sound that comes with the least resistance.
