Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be a muse? It has to be a bit weird, right? You could be the reason why someone got over someone, or why people fall in or out of love. You could be an aphrodisiac or heart balm. Your story could define summers and winters. In the case of Okay's Marty Anderson, you might be the reason why he wrote Huggable Dust.
Much like High Road and Low Road, the twin debuts Anderson dropped in 2005, Huggable Dust is a shamelessly personal affair that succeeds as much because of Anderson's gift for pop atmospherics as his wide-swinging emotional outpourings. But while its predecessors toyed with questions and trapdoors of a more existential nature, Huggable Dust is focused on that which galvanizes, clouds, and tangles everything in between: love.
At 18 songs, there's a lot of sonic acreage to get acquainted with; the album's length cuts both ways, depending on how you feel about Anderson's singing and lyrics. Described in an earlier review by Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner as "insectoid," Anderson's voice has a nasal, broken-sparrow quality that can be off-putting at times. But to my ears, it fits these songs well and works with his overall vision. His greatest talent is his ability to take small songs and make them huge, summoning out-of-nowhere climaxes as epic as the doodad-pop flourishes-- Xerox machines, Sega and R2-D2 effects galore-- are numerous. The resulting explosions tend to be both unexpected and breathtaking.
"Panda", likely a reference to Okay member Amanda Panda, is one of Huggable Dust's best examples. What feels like very much like the plodding but pleasant acoustic pop strokes found throughout transforms to something totally different: an intergalactic mating dance in which Anderson pulls out every stop he can. "Only", a fingerpicked lullaby with a chord pattern not unlike Bright Eyes' "First Day of My Life", finds Anderson duetting to powerful effect with a female voice that emanates from an answering machine.
Huggable Dust definitely seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion, with so many songs pulling in so many different emotional directions that it's difficult to enjoy at once. But when Anderson succeeds-- and he does often-- there's much to love as well. Late in the album, during what is it easily its most bruising ditty, he sings of white flags, of the song's title: truce. Whether or not the muse who might have inspired these songs is still part Anderson's life, she's certainly the lifeblood of the album.
