Last Town Chorus's languid cover of David Bowie's "Modern Love" is the song that landed the band prominent placement during one of television's most widely watched doctor shows. Astute listeners might hear this slo-mo "Modern Love", think back to M. Ward's slo-mo "Let's Dance", and wonder: coincidence? Couldn't Last Town Chorus have dug a little, you know, deeper?
Bowie's über-hit pops right out on the group's second album, Wire Waltz-- no doubt why the producers of "Grey's Anatomy" glommed on to it in the first place-- but that's too bad. Not for the band, of course, who surely appreciated the promotional push. It's just that the song almost single-handedly breaks the illusion Megan Hickey and her band have otherwise carefully fostered: ghostly cowboy singers floating through an urban metropolis, like America's slow, rural past seeping up from cracks in the pavement.
It's also too bad that it sends people straight to Wire Waltz when it's live on stage that Last Town Chorus have built their reputation. Singer Hickey's lap steel, coated with reverb, becomes an overwhelming presence, with layers of sound rolling across her songs like an otherworldly fog. On record, however, that lap steel is merely present, less an eerie outer-space touch (as invoked by someone like Daniel Lanois) than it is a predictable alt-country accoutrement.
It's not Americana that Last Town Chorus call up, though. It's singers and writers like Tanya Donnelly who have in the past used atmosphere to play up what they believe to be their attributes. In Hickey's case it's an excuse to keep her voice opiate-mellow and the songs almost skeletal in their simplicity. The weirder touches that liven up "Caroline", "Wintering in Brooklyn", and "It's Not Over" are subtle-- like the latter two's twisted circular guitar solos-- and mostly underscore the band's decision to stay safely within its comfort zone.
And yet these songs show Hickey to be a strong writer, albeit one hampered by her adherence to a dead-end aesthetic. The nostalgia-trip "Huntsville, 1989" turns Hickey's perpetual wistfulness to her advantage as she recalls lost loves, listening to the Smiths at bedtime, and trying to fit in on the outside. "Alabama, '89/ I found the kids with boots like mine," she sings, sounding far less precious than she could have. It's a beautiful highlight of the disc if only because very little else (aside from the Bowie) truly sticks out.
Part of it may be strategic. If you make your music sleepy on purpose, that cushions complaints from listeners that it puts them to sleep. Indeed, Wire Waltz works wonderfully as a late-night salve, not so much soothing as it is negating. It's music to put on when you want to forget the world around you for a while. Unfortunately, for all its class and mystery, Wire Waltz erases itself in the process, leaving behind more a sense of mood than anything worth remembering. It's all awfully pretty, but sometimes prettiness is more potent when there's a little bit of ugly in there, too.
