This label and I have a serious history. Interested? Glad to hear it. So just sit tight while I tear a page from my riveting autobiography:
(p. 147)Summer of '95. A quorum of my closest adolescent friends travels to Orlando for a community-sponsored Youth Group excursion and summarily return home, one and all: Saved! Born Again! It was just supposed to be a quick ticket out of our one-stoplight cultural abyss, but as it turned out, I didn't know the meaning of the word "insular." Next thing I know, it's Saturday night and I'm getting hauled to shuddersome teen-catered fireside Bible-socials and being told to trash my entire (!) record collection. My recently recalibrated friends had already done it. "Christian waters never run tepid." It was all or nothing. And there, Tooth & Nail, you were: steadfast and ice cold. You held all the answers, didn't you? Yep, for every successful and visionary secular band or movement, there was a carefully manicured response from the Christian music industry. I should know: I heard every one. (And by all means, feel free to put the test to any of the following suppositions.) For My Bloody Valentine there was Morella's Forrest; for Pavement: Sal Paradise; for Operation Ivy: Squad Five-0; and the sonic equivalent to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones? Why, the skalvation offerings of The O.C. Supertones! Naturally.
In truth, listening in on this stuff wasn't a total waste of time. Athens' own Summer Hymns supplanted the late, Zachary Gresham-led Joe Christmas, and I still spin each Damien Jurado record I own. Furthermore, just last month I rediscovered one of T&N;'s founding compatriots and venerable torchbearers: Jason Martin's Starflyer 59. Old, his eighth studio album is both a celebratory nod to mid-90s shoegaze pop and a successful grasp of the current fiber-optic-sparkled baton. Granted, he might not have a solitary death grip on any one industry spec, but he's definitely off and running in the right direction.
While his earliest releases were loosely wound, distorted MBV-tinged guitar-pop excursions, Martin's most recent recordings are sharper, more deeply melodic, and starkly atmospheric. Each of the ten tracks on Old carry a heretic regality that counter-intuitively sharpens the vintage tones of mid-90s shoegaze rock while fabricating purebred vitality and ripened accruement within a familiar pop construct. Most of the songs-- highlighted by the simpering and mid-paced (yet stellar) "Passenger", and the sterile luminosity of the piano-driven title track-- will leave a Grandaddy aftertaste in your mouth. The songs are mortally aware, as evidenced both in the lyrics and epic, reaching tones, which, thankfully, never venture into postmortem deliverance territory or carry burdensome testimonial weight.
Midway, the album slowly eases into a comfortable, crystalline canter, sinking off the coast of the album's earlier successes. The opener, "Underneath", brashly delivers campy yet self-assured guitar-rhythms and minor new-wave progressions laced with sweeping synths to great fortune. The final third of the song interfaces earlier, jostling elements into a singularly grand swing of momentum and a perfectly executed outro, lush with rolling drums and a background chorus of devilish nirvana. Martin's breathy, overcast vocals perfectly lace the song (the entire effort, really) with almost goth-like murkiness. But perhaps the highlight of the album, rather than any specific moment, is its ability to retain a congruous vision without ever growing stale within the confines of its own sonic inclinations. Each nuanced revelation has enough character to shine on its own, shuffling through spacious melodies and contracted moments of alloyed potency.
The biggest departure here comes with the flawless fusion of the closing track, "First Heart Attack", where a grandiose 70s Pink Floyd/Moody Blues stratospheric electric digression effortlessly retreats back into a lost Grandaddy acoustic ambit, in candid surrender to fate: "It's when I have my first heart attack/ And I can't even breathe/ You tell the truth, I know you wouldn't lie/ That I'm on my last beat." For all its thematic resignation, though, Old is no response to any secular undertaking, past or present, or cool acceptance of systemic classification. After ten years, the band surely isn't looking to break out-- even if the notion is long overdue. If you can overlook all the potential prefabricated pitfalls of such a release, sooner or later it'll hit you like it hit me: I'll be damned if this ain't a helluva solid record.
