James Jackson Toth's solo work-- Waiting in Vain is ostensibly his fourth solo record, though the three prior all flew under the Wooden Wand banner-- has traced a linear path from the bizarre psych-folk of Harem of the Sundrum & the Witness Figg to the layabout dust-rock of last year's James and the Quiet. Those albums, increasingly structured and tuneful, felt like a natural reaction to Wooden Wand's unstructured heathenism. Here, however, Toth transforms from hip(pie) priest to forlorn wanderer via a cocktail of Casanova-isms, armchair psychology, and alt-country. That Toth swung fully the other way was no surprise, but it was always a dicey proposition: Toth is neither an excellent vocal stylist nor a particularly clever wordsmith, and his intrigue has always been based on a mixture of homespun oddity and improvisational excess. To think that his world is now vying for a(nother) Bright Eyes opening gig-- see: "Beulah the Good"-- or hacking college radio playlists places that intrigue in the rearview.
Waiting in Vain is deeply invested in Americana aesthetics, positing Toth as the pose-able Kris Kristofferson action figure. Early on, it becomes apparent that given a lilting, slow-beat ballad, Toth will wind himself in knots being poetic: enter the detestable "Doreen", in which all of Toth's worst lyrical tendencies-- arrogance and vagary amid simple rhymes-- pop up. To wit: "I'm dreaming in a room with a complicated clown," "You tell me I ain't your dad/ But I'm better than the one you had," and, most vexing, "You're the water/ I'm the trace of lead inside." "Look in on Me" presents "Cocaine and bourbon, pinball and pool" as personal attributes, as if they represent a sense of despair or emotional investment. "Poison Oak" (NB: not the Oberst song of the same name) drags depressingly ("Your father oughta have his old head busted in/ For raising you up like he did"); "Do What You Can" is soggy and shapeless.
Too bad, because "Look in on Me" represents one of a handful of songs on Waiting in Vain that contain both competent hooks and a careful arrangement. Toth has always had really cool friends, and here Vetiver's Andy Cabic shows up. Nels Cline (Wilco, the Nels Cline Singers) and Deerhoof's John Dieterich take turns on guitar; the brilliant, harmonic squiggles on "The Dome" and "The Banquet Styx" are likely theirs. The beefy, uptempo rush of "Beulah the Good" and "Styx" help overcome Toth's missteps. On "Beulah", he momentarily discovers his inner Blonde on Blonde-- "I was miserable and bitter/ Life was easy," "I used to have seven wives/ I can't even count to six"-- and finally seems at ease in his druggy self-consciousness.
"The Dome" is particularly frustrating: Its seven minutes of doom-folk sound like someone bloodied R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" and as Toth drones ominously about "the telephone zone" it becomes clear that this displaced drudgery is a better fit for Toth's demeanor than jaunty, pretty country-rock. Wooden Wand more than proved Toth an idiosyncratic artist worthy of attention, but Waiting in Vain trades oddity for reasonably executed convention far too often. The result is pale, beefy, and contemptuous.
