Before recording Alibi Coast, Sebastian Blanck was an accomplished painter and founding member of the electronic group Black Dice, which formed at his alma mater RISD in the late 1990s. After leaving Black Dice to focus on his painting, Blanck returned to music, but veered away from his former band's electronic aesthetic and started writing mostly unplugged folk songs. Alibi Coast came together as Blanck mourned the loss of his brother, who died in a drowning accident in 2007. A reimagination of the mysterious last few months of his brother's life, the album is a sweet and sometimes dark tribute highlighted by guest vocal contributions from Olivia Mori, Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark, Chairlift's Caroline Polachek, and fellow Rare Book Room artist Lia Ices.
Co-produced with Jorge Elbrecht of Violens, the album has a warm, wide-open atmosphere reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel and, with the help of the female vocalists, the Mamas & the Papas (adding to the effect, Blanck often doubles his own vocal track). These production choices help make Blanck's deeply personal studies on love and death more intimate and accessible. But while there's an undeniably studious musician at work on every track, Blanck's most instrumentally bare-bones and lyrically explicit songs are the least interesting.
Still, hidden among all their slow tempos and saccharine vocal lines are messy details that perhaps speak to the most frustrating and unsettled aspects of the mourning process. Blanck is at his best when he gives himself over to these unresolved, knotted issues, accepting that a song doesn't have to end with an answer. On "One Sided Town", the album's dominant breezy tone is replaced halfway with dark, hungry, and uncontrolled electric guitars, wailing, fuzzed-out and feedback-heavy. The lyrics deal with alienation and regret, but in veiled and abstruse ways that invite deeper listening. "Black Sanded Beach" features more haunting passages, including moving allusions to death and an attention-grabbing guitar solo that fits right in because the song builds layers gradually to meet it.
Blanck's guest vocalists feel like fully fledged [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| collaborators. On the single-worthy "Answers", the sharp tambourine percussion and heavier pop influence speak to Polachek's musical background, while the vocally driven "Don't Let the Darkness Gather Me" speaks to Stark's. "Answers" is another example of ambiguity and complexity working in Blanck's favor. The refrain-- "The answers that I gave/ Helped to lay the trap that I'm caught in/ The questions that I raised/ Won't help the guilt you feel lessen"-- leaves ample room for the listener to explore and interpret. Blanck's collaboration with Lia Ices, "Tumbling Skies", is another standout track featuring her stamp of understated, wandering piano and wounded vocals. It's a lot to ask to share a loss so openly-- not only with listeners but with other musicians. But Alibi Coast is undoubtedly a better album because Blanck was willing to do so.
