It would be impossible to mistake Judah Johnson frontman Daniel Johnson for Daniel Johnston no matter how many t's you misplaced-- the latter plays the most uninflected sort of music imaginable; the former's songs are as delicate and intricately tangled as stored Christmas tree lights. This Detroit-based quintet is quite literally a post-rock band: After they finish rocking, they post up at the laptop to make sure they don't wind up rocking too hard. There's a fairly standard song at the core of each of Judah Johnson's ponderous compositions, but it's always interleaved with and bookended by manipulated samples culled from the song itself, so that each track flows inward like a whirlpool, sometimes sweeping our attention up in its currents, sometimes sucking it right down the drain. Judah Johnson never met a meta gesture they didn't like.
Be Where I Be is an undeniably good-sounding album, brimming with fluid samples, intricate tinker-toy drum machines, carefully collaged vocal loops, ironclad basslines chased with generously reverbed guitar, spectral harmonies, gently discordant ambience, nervous click tracks, and grandly sweeping melodies. Judah Johnson uses this multitude of sound to produce spacey rockers like "Star Struck", snarled in distortion and greased-hog-slick harmonies, and sleepy ballads like "Loop Hymn", with Johnson's prayerful verses drifting through a bed of clipped vocal loops, tiny bells, and languid arcs of guitar.
But undercutting the pleasant sonics is a nagging sense of hollowness, and while it's hard to imagine what these songs would sound like without all the bells and whistles, one catches a distinct whiff of something overdone. Either Johnson's songs are all really similar or he makes them sound that way in post-production; regardless, the overzealous pruning makes for a nice but not particularly memorable record, and Judah Johnson ultimately comes off as John Vanderslice with less personality. The relentlessly overwritten lyrics don't help dispel the record's grave, grayish mood. "Ooh, child, it won't get easier, it won't get brighter," Johnson sings on "Little Sounds" (take that, the Five Stairsteps!).
Similar images of disconnection and confusion blur by in a sparkling haze for the duration, and often you can feel them not through the agency of the lyrics, but vis-à-vis the music itself. "Stuck in this minor key," Johnson sings over the music box tinkle of "Niagara Walls", as if he's fully aware of the groove he's etching into his sound. Every lucid moment on the album, like the starry lope of "Seeing Things", finds itself soon swimming in a lovely murk, pinioned in the unbreakable secret grip of Johnson's effects rack. Be Where I Be will sound just fine whenever you hear it; the trick is remembering to put it on.
