Up to this point, there have been three aspects of the Radar Bros. that have remained fairly consistent. For one, there's singer Jim Putnam, who's been at the controls during the past two decades of frequent lineup changes. Their sprawling catalog has also been unified by a general lack of urgency, which has allowed them the ability to pass for pre-Limewire indie classifications such as slowcore, shoegaze, folk-rock, and even alt-country, the last one largely due to their name. For the most part, the Radar Bros. have made it work for them, creating music that can simultaneously be described as both sun-baked and moving at a glacial pace. But the third constant is hinted at by Eight's truth-in-advertising title; this is the eighth Radar Bros. album and the eighth one that's too inconsistent to push them from the periphery to the center of discussion, a handful of truly striking songs padded out by a greater number of perfectly pleasant ones.
Eight does show a desire to alter that perception, though its most visceral track barely crawls. "If We Were Banished" sounds like little else on Eight, a godhonest throwback to shoegaze-indebted alt-rock bands like Hum, Failure, and Medicine (of which Putnam was a former member) that tweaks the blown-out guitar/drowsy vocal formula ever so slightly; Putnam’s voice is even lower than usual amidst the frothy chords and the tendency for songs of this nature to churn through a single progression makes each melodic turn sound even more forceful and unexpected. It's an interesting dichotomy, sounding both like it's constantly building and slowly decaying at the same time.
Thing is, for all its attempts to distance itself from Radar Brothers' previous work, relativity is Eight's greatest asset-- "Reflections" and "Time Rolling By" generate enough momentum to nominally "rock," but they only rock compared to other Radar Brothers songs. Likewise, while these are the most clearly legible Radar Bros. songs, this shift often demonstrates Putnam's frequent lapses into cumbersome diction and doughy melodies. "Change College of Law" wisely gives up on its melodically stiff and awkwardly-worded hook to bash out a little bit towards the end, and lyrics like "winding up on the couch that swallows pain" seems about right, as most of Eight appears to acknowledge pain while being overly passive about it. In the same song ("Couch"), Putnam drawls about fighting over current events without sounding even the least bit ornery or aware of the day's news. Meanwhile, "Ebony Bow" has a queasy verse that belongs in a more avant-garde setting, while "Angler's Life" and "Bottle Song" are too slick for country, not hard enough for rock, and not quite literary enough for NPR, but probably the right tenor for a Grant Lee Phillips solo album.
So really, it doesn't turn out all that different from the most recent Earlimart, Beachwood Sparks, or Jason Lytle records: perfectly okay, not pushy enough to be even remotely unpleasant, and in a way you're hoping it's better, since not only would you get a good record out of the deal, but the attendant staying power would somehow retroactively validate a certain time period. Instead, it's a nice consolation, a testament to keeping the faith in a bygone kind of genial, shaggy Californian Y2k ideal of indie rock, but I'd like to think there was more to its cover art homage to Hissing of Summer Lawns than simply sounding like a perfect accompaniment to a game of horseshoes in the front yard.
