By Nick Zammuto’s measure, the Books didn’t end well. "I’m still too close to it to talk about it without getting angry," the vocalist/multi-instrumentalist for the defunct collage-pop duo told Pitchfork back in 2012. When asked about the pointed lyrics on his self-titled solo debut from that year, he opened up a little bit more: "Everyone’s got a brass robot in their lives that they want to tear a new one, right?" He went on to refer to his last record with Books member Paul de Jong, the meditative 2010 effort The Way Out, as "an optimistic attempt to see if it could still work"; although the record stands as the slightest in the Books’ singular catalog, its mix of new age affectations, torrents of rhythmic underpinning, and straightforward humor never suggested the work of two people having trouble staying in the same room from each other.
Even though Zammuto described his inaugural solo bow as "about making that difficult decision to cut your losses and move on," the record brimmed with a giddy sense of wonderment. Endings are hard, though, and two years later, it doesn’t quite seem like Zammuto has come full-circle in the grieving process. The video for "IO", a single from his second solo album, Anchor, seems innocuous at first, a documentation of Zammuto and cohorts building a large-scale catapult to set soaring a variety of objects into the surrounding scenery (perhaps a visual equivalent to the artist’s more frenetic musical moments). It seems to be all in good fun—that is, until the 1:20 running mark, in which the HP computer used to make The Way Out is loaded, launched, and smashed into the ground. When it lands, Zammuto himself is seen gleefully running after it with a sledgehammer, which he makes use of on the surviving hardware.
So the specter of failure still looms over his work, and it’s hard not to see Anchor as an extension of that mood. The frozen, wintry album art is the inverse of Zammuto’s verdant-spring look, and what’s inside is similarly chilly, a downcast collection of tunes that counts as Zammuto’s most low-key work since the Books’ underrated 2005 LP Lost and Safe. The record marks a specific shift in Zammuto’s sound—more straightforward, less nervy, a Rube Goldberg device replaced with a single manual lever—but there are a few moments where his earlier sound shines through. "Need Some Sun" rests on daisy-chained thrums of bass strings, Zammuto’s silvery voice weaving in and out of the web the four-stringed instrument weaves; a burst of bleeps gently disrupts the sparseness of "Great Equator", while album closer "Code Breaker" engages in some intricate tonal work that should please anyone who’s taken comfort in former Emeralds member Mark McGuire’s expansive rock hypnosis.
Otherwise, Anchor lacks excitement and Zammuto’s trademark ingenuity. He sounds uninspired and bored, with arrangements that rustle unhurriedly and a sense of stiff formalism reminiscent of Andrew Bird collaborator Martin Dosh’s conservatory-school post-rock solo work. Even in Zammuto’s and his former band’s most uninspired moments, their music sounded like little else out there. By comparison, Anchor goes as far to feature a cover of sorts, unheard of in Zammuto’s little corner of the world—specifically, a rendition of the traditional folk song "Henry Lee", which has been covered before and with greater success. Zammuto’s take is static and muted, with a small cinematic wash providing the tune’s only source of tension.
Anchor’s quiet, indifferent drift is disappointing, but the album’s biggest misstep, paradoxically, is also its boldest cut: "IO", which pairs flatulent bass with a swaggering vocal performance from Zammuto and a drum beat befitting Eddie Money. The brief entrance of stiff, obtrusive strings underlines its inherent off-putting qualities, and even though it appears on a record that could use some thrilling moments, “IO” is the wrong type of disruption. Still, even though Anchor is a truly disappointing work from such an inventive mind, it’s not enough to suggest that he’s reached the point of creative bankruptcy. Perhaps it’s best to think of Anchor as more catapult fodder, another artifact to be launched into the air and destroyed in search of a fresh start.
