50% of the songs on Ida's new record contain the words "sleep," "bed," "weariness," "night," "slow," "crawl," or "late." 35% of the songs on the record contain the word "love." So, if you're expecting Will You Find Me to be a collection of tired love songs, you're correct on many levels. Not only does the record act as a powerful sedative, it also stands as a perfect example of how conscious attempts to construct a specific type of album can suffocate a band. Ida try to be pretty like the Dwarves try to be badass, replacing power chords and the word "fuck" with male-female harmonies and lyrics about butterflies.
"Down on Your Back," one of the Will You Find Me's many appropriately titled songs, is a perfect thesis statement for Ida's bland audio tranquilizer. High-pitched female and falsetto male vocals sing over delicately plucked guitars as if to clarify that the music is, in fact, very, very pretty. But even those delicate harmonies can't save a lyric like "all your secrets collide" from its Bonnie Tyler overtones.
Ida is a model case for style over substance. Throughout this record, their goal is solely to be pretty. They attempt to achieve this through singing in major 3rds, 4ths, and 5ths, a techinique which could have had decent results if they'd varied their chord progressions. This gets especially tiring during a 6+ minute-long epic like "Maybelle," when the overwhelming prettiness fades into a completely innocuous, unaffecting backdrop.
The majority of Will You Find Me does nothing to break this mold. A slow-to-mid tempo is maintained for the album's entire hour-long duration, with flourishes of guitar, piano, and occasional keyboards piping up once in a while. Sadly, these temporary brushes with interest are minuscule, and fail to rouse the listener from their comatose slumber.
At times, the album does grab your attention, but never for the right reasons. The album's indisputable low point comes with "Past the Past," a song whose title could have been penned by the Promise Ring or Bright Eyes. It's an appropriate comparison, too, as the track suffers from sometimes-singer Daniel Littleton's excessively emotional vocals. I use the term "emotional" loosely, though.
Will You Find Me could have been a record brimming with genuine emotion-- an album made by four people truly interested in getting their feelings down on tape. But I'm inherently suspicious of a record which tries so hard to be this sensitive. From the soft-focus pictures of shy-looking band members on the cover art, to songs with titles like "Don't Be Sad," Ida never miss an opportunity to remind you that they are, as All Music Guide puts it, "the best band in the country at writing those pretty songs that make you want to get cozy with your sweetie."
To make matters worse, occasionally passionate lyrics are met with the same bland musical treatment as those that actually fit Ida's sonic Demerol. "We were like kids with a shotgun/ Blowing up words till there were none," is given the same musical treatment as, "I could watch you sleep for hours/ Without noticing that it's getting really late." But despite the fact that the band seems to have set out to create a mature, affecting record this time around, the painfully self-aware nature of their endeavor has rendered any stirring impact the album might have harbored dead on arrival.
