Rockcrit's 1990s reappraisal of (some) country music remains largely unresolved. Ryan Adams has long since exposed himself as merely a gifted mockingbird; Wilco assimilated Brian Wilson sunshine and Radiohead abstraction only to give your stepdad, with their latest, something hep to hawk on Half.com. Whither, then, the weary, Dust Bowl clarity of so-called alt-country? Could modern Americana, already deeply imitative, evolve without imitating yet something else? Finally, crucially: Was a carefully distilled approximation of earnestness really all that made "Houses on the Hill" better than "You're Still the One"?
Guess what: Slow Dazzle-- named for a John Cale album, but better known as two-thirds of second-tier indie-pop group Mendoza Line-- don't provide any definitive answers. Still, at least they're throwing out a few hints. Core duo Shannon McArdle and Timothy Bracy like their rustic vocals and saloon songwriting ensconced in dreamy electronics and ProTools psychedelia, courtesy of third member and producer Peter Langland-Hassan: backwards guitars, dirge-like drum machines, atmospheric synths. The Mekons' Sally Timms has charted a similar course in her solo work. In a word, it's art-country, and the underlying urban/rural dichotomy neatly befits Slow Dazzle's Brooklyn-via-Georgia roots.
Over a sparse eight songs, The View From the Floor continues the male/female point-counterpoint of recent Mendoza Line records. McArdle's wavering twang opens the disc on the lush, elliptical "Fleur de Lis", the album's least country moment. McCardle's "Wedding Dance" is the strongest original song here, a typically desperate Appalachian ballad dressed up with hints of piano and cavernous synth strings. Bracy-penned "The Extent of My Remarks" lets her wax goofily morbid-- pushing lovers down stairs, running off with women, suiciding-- but though her vocals call to mind a less-tuneful Neko Case, the depravity never really goes anywhere. Bracy, for his part, struggles to affect the grizzled, off-key knowingness of Bob Dylan or a folksier Lou Reed. He alludes to Coen Brothers films and unjudiciously employs extended judicial metaphors. "There's nothing more ridiculous than a man chasing his hat," he wheezes, "except perhaps a man chasing a girl like you."
All of which brings us to that final question: What, other than aging newspapermen's personal biases (now too easily derided as "rockism") made certain alt-country more affecting than most mainstream country-pop? I submit, exactly what literary critic Martin Amis has tirelessly championed in his own chosen purview: talent. You can become rich without talent, famous without talent, but you can't become talented without talent, Amis writes. So we do away with talent: The author of Hannibal is hailed as Pulitzer-worthy; the likes of Shania receive unironic accolades (patience, Brooks & Dunn).
Alas, it is in this nebulous quality-- talent-- that Slow Dazzle's efforts here ultimately prove deficient. A halting, unexceptional Leonard Cohen cover stands leagues above anything else on the disc. There's no shame in a well-executed cover, but Slow Dazzle's "Anthem" is no match for Johnny Cash's "Bird on a Wire", the suddenly unfashionable Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah", or-- if we may expand beyond Cohen-- Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression".
