The thing about making a record that everybody loves is that your next album, however stylistically different or experimental, will inevitably be compared to it. So, let's just get this out of the way: Quasi's latest, Field Studies, is not as good as last year's critics' darling, Featuring "Birds." That album clothed frontman Sam Coomes' utterly bleak worldview in bouncy, cheery pop that made the poison go down effortlessly. And while Field Studies certainly boasts its share of infectious pop tunes, the tempos are slower, the songs are longer, and one's patience with Coomes' cynicism gradually grows thin over the course of the album.
While most of the songs on Featuring "Birds" hesitated to venture past the three-minute mark (which was good), there are several on Field Studies that approach or cross the five-minute mark (which is bad, for them), including the album's centerpiece, "A Fable with No Moral," which is over seven minutes long! Did these songs need to be this lengthy? Would their edge have been dulled if the excess chaff was trimmed off? Of course not! "Fable" is by far the worst offender of all the songs here-- not only is it overly long, but its execution is extremely heavy-handed and overly obvious. The track kicks off with the line, "I went and sold my soul so I could pay my rent." Coomes then goes on to detail his various attempts to sell his soul. If the song had been presented in a less clumsy manner, it's might come across as clever and possibly charming. But that's not the way it worked out.
There are, however, plenty of songs here that live up to Coomes' and co-conspirator (read: ex-wife) Janet Weiss' previous benchmarks: "Under a Cloud," "Skeleton," "Smile," and the opener, "All the Same," ring with patented fuzzed-out Roxichord drones, and boast melodies and clever couplets that have the potential to get stuck in the ol' noggin for weeks. Also worth a mention is Weiss' sole contribution to the proceedings, "Two by Two," a beautifully chilling anti-love song. This is one of those tracks that initially sounds all wrong, but soon ingratiates the listener to its peculiar charms. These songs are all definitely the equal of the best songs on Featuring "Birds", even if they fail to bring anything new to the table.
Field Studies sees Coomes trying to develop his pop sensibility, but if you ask me, he's headed in the wrong direction. Instead of focusing on his songwriting skills and keeping the musical accompaniment stripped down, he seems to be trying to add bizarre quirks to cover up the fact that he only knows how to write one type of song. There are probably ten times more bells and whistles on Field Studies than on any previous Quasi release. Now, that's not to say that it's overproduced-- it's all tastefully done, and the sound quality is actually really nice. But this seems to have been accomplished at the expense of the integrity of the songs.
I wouldn't necessarily classify Field Studies as a failed experiment because it's really too good of a record for that. But I would say that next time around, it wouldn't hurt Coomes to keep his tendencies towards bombast in check.
