When he learned that Justin Vernon was expanding Bon Iver from a one-man project into a full band, Sean Carey retreated to his bedroom, broke down For Emma, Forever Ago into parts, and learned each one. After approaching Vernon at a show and briefly jamming together, Carey was hired more or less on the spot. That's not the most exciting chapter of the Bon Iver story, but it says a great deal about Carey and his first solo album, the shimmery, contemplative All We Grow. With a degree in classical percussion from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Carey approaches songwriting and recording as a student: obsessive and detail oriented, able to absorb a great deal of information and restate it not rotely, but artfully. He has obviously spent a great deal of time absorbing the works of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Mark Hollis, and Bill Evans, and on his solo songs he renders those sounds and influences into music that lies somewhere between folk and composition.
That approach places Carey among a loose group of musicians who are currently bucking folk's traditional emphasis on spontaneous performance in favor of a much more composerly tack-- musicians who give Glass and Reich the same esteem Dylan or Fred Neil usually enjoy. Carey doesn't build minimalist arrangements around vernacular tunes like Sam Amidon, deconstruct Appalachian traditions like Megafaun, or emphasize atmosphere to quite the degree that Vernon does. Instead, the distinguishing characteristic of All We Grow is its elemental quality: Using only a piano, guitar, and drums, Carey creates a sound that is simultaneously austere and lush, pitting each instrument against the others. On "We Fell", the drums and guitar create the suggestion of a self-sustaining groove, but the song really comes alive when Carey's piano flutters through the middle of it like a contrail, the theme becoming lovelier and more poignant with each repetition. Following the unraveling of the mournful "Mothers", "Action" lives up to its title as its jarring intro establishes an insistent percussion rhythm that punctuates the nettle-sharp guitar licks. Every element reinforces the sense of bittersweet nostalgia implied by that found-image album cover.
Of all the instruments on All We Grow, the least compelling may be Carey's voice. He possesses a sleepy whisper that has relatively limited vocal or dramatic range, but he compensates by mic'ing it very closely to capture its grain and texture. That technique-- used to good effect on opener "Move" and the mostly wordless "Mothers"-- emphasizes the sound of his voice over any lyrical meaning it might convey. For all practical purposes, All We Grow might as well be an instrumental album, so much so that it sounds best when Carey eschews vocals altogether. The title track opens with a prismatic intro anchored to perhaps the album's most structured melodies, but it's only after the music departs from the lyrics that the song really opens up. Carey unstitches it carefully, allowing each instrument to break away from the others gradually, even as the music threatens to dissipate into the air.
Not every song achieves such effortless drama. At times, Carey comes across as more a student than a master. He has obviously consumed a tremendous amount of music, but he hasn't fully digested some of his influences. "In the Dirt" employs fluttering woodwinds recognizable from the last few Sufjan Stevens albums, and several songs favor an almost mechanized piano theme that's practically quoted from Philip Glass. Yet these familiar elements ultimately inform rather than dispel the album's pervasive melancholy, making All We Grow a nice complement to, rather than a distraction from, his day job.
