In the mid-1990s, the flavor of choice among new commercial country talent was bland. White male sensi-singers, predominately in their mid twenties or early thirties, dominated the airwaves. Chief among them was Clay Walker, who-- aside from scoring two feel-good hits that were essentially blue-collar translations of carpe diem-- climbed the charts with a handful of soulless, sad-eyed ballads about unrequited or abandoned love. Walker's voice was masterful, but he couldn't wrangle the right emotion out of lines about being a "fixture on an old forgotten wall." As such, country patriarch Hank Williams is to Clay Walker as, 10 years later, acoustic songwriting fixture Nick Drake is to Alexi Murdoch.
Like Walker, Drake, and Williams, the Scottish-born, London-raised, and Los Angeles-living Murdoch has the gift of voice: His mid-range tenor is rich and generous, perfectly suited for the autumnal imagery of "Orange Sky", the song that launched a major-label bidding war (which he escaped) after its placement on "The O.C." That track was the best moment on his 2002 debut EP, and it claims the same laurel on his 11-track debut LP, Time Without Consequence. Murdoch's not all hopeful tranquility, however; Time Without Consequence is also about searching for happiness, stumbling through darkness, dealing in desolate hours-- and Murdoch's voice is simply too pleasant and staid to express the range his songwriting implies. Nothing seems hard-won.
"And though I have the strength to move a hill/ I can hardly leave my room," sings Murdoch on "Wait", one of several Time tracks where he overplays love-as-life analogies. As he does elsewhere, Murdoch uses a surprising minor chord change to illustrate announced despair, but it seems as though he's left with those devices simply because he can't sing his way into evocation. Vocally, his sadness isn't convincing: The interminable length of lonely days Murdoch mentions on "Song for You" is described but not illustrated, and the anxious exuberance written and played about in "Love You More" never gets needed vocal confirmation.
Because he seems largely incapable of pushing his voice beyond satisfied emotional stasis, Murdoch stretches the band that supports his careful finger-picking, experimenting with arrangements in a way that offers more promise than the rest of the album. Nuanced production decisions like an ambient pedal point icing through "Wait" or atonal string flourishes ripping far beneath the Delta-to-downtown acoustic guitar of "Dream About Flying" suggest that Murdoch, who produced the album and directed its pool of capable left-coast session players, is thinking beyond the archetypal austerity, orchestration and restraint of Drake and the Zombies' Colin Blunstone.
But, perhaps for that reason, the disc's biggest, loudest moments-- both almost entirely instrumental-- seem like conscious, awkward decisions to roar free of the hem of vocal-imposed nicety: "12" builds through post-rock clang and guitar shimmers before its seven minutes expire, and ""Home" elicits feedback and layers of tabla. Sure, Murdoch could sing his way into a wet kiss or a record deal, but, here, he can't conduct that, his best tool, into believability.
