I can say with a degree of certainty that I've heard a riff similar to the one in PS I Love You's "Sentimental Dishes" at least a thousand times in my life. And yet, a gritted combination of power chords and a major-key melody swaddled in guitar fuzz never fails to trigger the same bundle of associations: This is Underdog Music, conceived in a ramshackle garage in a city with no other social options, recorded on the cheap, and above all else, fun, a celebration of spirit trumping skill. The first of those two are likely the case for PS I Love You, who hail from the college town of Kingston, Ontario, and who don't sound like they've followed up 2010's Meet Me at the Muster Station with a much larger budget. Don't let the commonality of the words in Death Dreams' title-- these are two of rock's most enduring subjects-- mislead you: Death Dreams might sound beer-soaked, but it's drowning its sorrows with very loud and brash songs about very small and internal breakdowns.
Though it implies a deep interest in the metaphysically morbid, most of Death Dreams' lyrics concern the everyday problems of being alive-- financial insecurity, social anxiety, a longing for the immediate past. It's the sort of thing endemic to truly being on your own for the first time, and in PS I Love You's case, it's fairly easy to read into their particular post-grad depression as a band: They spent a couple of years gutting it out in Canada's competitive indie rock scene, and the positive reception of Muster Station made touring outside of their local surroundings feasible and necessary, though likely not entirely lucrative. Over the rangy "Future Dontcare", Paul Saulnier sounds about as resigned as his Frank Black squawk will allow him, admitting, "I wish this summer was like last summer/ Love doesn't care about the future." More to the point is "All I ever wanted/ Is more than I ever had," a line repeated in three separate tracks: here, and elsewhere, what Saulnier claims to have had sounds frighteningly hollow.
Much of Death Dreams is addressed to a "you" likely too far in the rearview to respond to Saulnier's heart-rending confessions-- on "Saskatoon", he confides "you pulled out your hammer and broke open my chest," likely knowing it's a one-sided conversation. And though "Sentimental Dishes" rages through a seemingly joyful chorus repeatedly yelling "I don't wanna do the dishes!/ You don't wanna do the dishes!," it's not a petulant brat's protest against parental authority. The problem with the tableware (and later, secrets) is that "you got to keep them... for the rest of your life," becoming something like a "no wire hangers!" situation where a mundane domestic problem becomes a metaphor triggering an epic meltdown.
But the parts of Death Dreams that really sting are the ones that long for comforts of home and stability that "Sentimental Dishes" implies are unachievable. Amidst all the churning drums and distortion, it's all too easy to miss how Death Dreams is amongst the most thoroughly dejected albums you'll hear in 2012: "Don't Go" edges perilously close to emo freefall ("This is the worst week of my life!"), before Salunier pulls back with a startling admission of how he got there: "Sleeping in the van with a knife in my hand.../ In one day I lost all I ever loved." His mantra of "your pretty, pretty city" during "Toronto" is one seemingly born of awe and fear, as Saulnier goes out for pancakes, writes in his diary, and reads comic books alone at 6 a.m. only to think someone's constantly following him. That PS I Love You manage to give Death Dreams a real sense of perspective even with such an economy of words is crucial. Outside of the occasional flurry-fingered tapping solo that hints at otherwise untapped technical proficiency, the musical values here-- essentially, indie when it felt equally informed by punk and classic rock-- are so familiar that contorting one's self to describe it anew is ridiculously difficult and not even that helpful. You either want a cheeseburger or you don't.
But even comfort food's gotta deliver, and particularly after the second "Death Dreams" interlude, PS I Love You mire tentatively between jams and songcraft-- there's some truly ingratiating melodies scattered throughout the first half, and Saulnier's lyrics have substance and weight, but too often they fail to coincide simultaneously. There's also the matter of the unflattering, flabby production that smothers pretty much every edge and hook and raises the question of how a strict guitar/drums duo somehow manages to be so difficult to record. Perhaps it's a conscious decision, to make Saulnier's yelping against a hovering layer of insulation make the struggles of the lyrics more pronounced and viscerally real. But at its worst, it just sounds like he's being tickle tortured.
Ultimately, it's all too tempting to extrapolate the pervasive crisis of confidence that runs throughout Death Dreams as a symptom of PS I Love You's own context. Muster Station remains a perfectly enjoyable record that in retrospect was likely the beneficiary of being one of the few doing this sort of thing well at the time. And Death Dreams might be equally strong, but its inability to step things up can come off like a retreat in light of how much tuneful, wooly garage rock has come out since. Not to mention that while most groups suffer comparatively to Japandroids, being the other Canadian fuzz-rock duo singing about being in a band and the accompanying generational malaise isn't going to do you many favors in 2012. Death Dreams has its charms, but it begs the question of how much you can be excited about an underdog amongst underdogs.
