The title of Labor Pains was wasted on Sinai Vessel’s debut. Frontman Caleb Cordes joked that the process of making the follow-up had become a full-blown “DIY Frank Ocean sort of thing”—writing, recording, ditching the original mixes and re-recording has put five and a half years worth of distance between Brokenlegged and its predecessor (three and change if you include the Profanity EP). It’s an odd position for an emo band to be in—perfectionism is about the exact opposite of what its devotees ask for. After all, this music thrives on unsteady vocals, careening aggression and the immediacy of desperation and epiphany. Listeners and artists tend to age fast, distancing themselves from their dearly beheld truths of two years prior. When Labor Pains dropped in 2011, today’s conscientious scene leaders Modern Baseball and the Hotelier were still teenage pop-punk bands. Fortunately, Cordes has made the most out of the protracted wait: Brokenlegged is a rich and multifaceted emo record, exploring not only the expected moments of catharsis, but the complicated hangovers that arise in their aftermath.
It makes for a logical follow-up to the gnarled, strident Profanity, which used mewithoutYou and Pedro the Lion as both sonic and lyrical guidance in how to extricate oneself from an evangelical upbringing. Reaffirming North Carolina as home after college, Cordes described the main theme of Brokenlegged as, “trying to figure out how to live among people who haven’t come to the same realizations of truth as you...who just take the status quo as being the truth.” Whatever that meant for him during the creation of Brokenlegged, it’s a loaded statement that’s going to be interpreted a very specific way in January of 2017. Red-state living isn’t addressed all that much in indie rock (or any genre) and as we’ve all seen on our Facebook feeds and family gatherings in the past few months, even well-intentioned attempts to breach this topic easily fall victim to either barely concealed anger or condescension.
Lead single “Dogs” (a presumptive sequel to Profanity’s “Cats”) could have fell victim to both, as a loftily-worded worded indictment of religious zealots. The general theme is familiar, exposing the hypocrisy of fundamentalists othering those who live in their same community in the name of love, and Cordes doesn’t fall into the same trap. There’s a “write what you know”/“know your enemy” wisdom in “Dogs” that puts it in a league with Modest Mouse’s “Trailer Trash” or the Mountain Goats’ Tallahassee, rare examples of indie rock that look directly at this kind of pathology rather than simply looking down on it.
“Dogs” is something of an outlier; most of Brokenlegged isn’t as overt about its spiritual and political leanings. The few immediately understandable lyrics—“It gets better every day, move along,” “I used to be scared/I used to be just like you”—are crucial guideposts through Cordes’ occasionally impenetrable thickets of allusive imagery.
Often times, it's easier and just as rewarding to derive the meaning from the clenched intensity of Sinai Vessel's hardworking and exceedingly dense arrangements. The songs have sturdy, solid cores, and intriguing details at the edges justifying the band's exacting craftsmanship. Grace notes, like the vibraphone ringing through the pregnant atmosphere of “Ramekin” or the caustic yells that interrupt “Laughlin,” push Sinai Vessel outside of the swaying, ocean-sprayed sound that defines the bulk of Brokenlegged. Though the eight songs here barely take up a half hour, they assume the heft of a record twice its length.
Ironically, Cordes’ painstaking songwriting only comes off as ostentatious on the album's sparest song. “Died on My Birthday” is a solo acoustic number performed as grave and solemnly as it’s titled, its immediacy sapped by counterintuitive word choices: cacophonous phrases like “rattles our lentil bowls” and “cruel lunch” land like sprained ankles, while “arbiter” and “fortnight” become distractions in the way “judge” or “two weeks” wouldn’t. Some might hear it as Brokenlegged’s answer to the Hotelier’s “Housebroken,” a brief tailspin on a record with an otherwise masterfully controlled trajectory. It just also just as easily have an “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”-like life outside of Brokenlegged, the breakout on an otherwise glistening, depressive and cohesive record. Either way, the manner in which Cordes puts himself out there with his superhumanly earnest delivery ensures it truly belongs. Brokenlegged isn't perfection—could it be trusted if it was?—but every second sounds like it earned its right to exist.
