I have no idea how much effort Neil Halstead puts into writing his songs; for all I know, he's secretly slaving over every chord change. But across a few decades and three projects, he's made it sound remarkably easy, like these tunes just drop out of his sleeves on slow afternoons. That's the common thread running through his work, from Slowdive (the dreamy English shoegaze act he started with) to Mojave 3 (a brand of dreamy Americana) to his solo records (on which he barely seems to have changed out of his pajamas)-- he writes sleepy, graceful pop songs like there's no higher calling on earth, and all signs suggest it comes naturally. A guitar, a handful of chords, and a lilting mumble, and he always provides something that works.
Oh! Mighty Engine is his second solo record, following 2002's well-liked Sleeping on Roads. That first album's name seemed apt: Halstead's music is good company for travel and sleep both. This new album's name isn't so apt, though, either in its old-folkie implications or the suggestion that there's any kind of internal combustion involved here, any aspiration toward the "mighty". This record comes to us via Brushfire, Jack Johnson's Hawaii-based label, and the fit's a surprisingly good one: Years away from those stylish shoegazer days, Halstead passes awfully well as a beardy beach-bound slacker, standing contentedly in Californian sun instead of English rain, a guitar on the passenger seat and a surfboard on the roof.
And this record, I'm guessing, sounds a lot better if you live someplace where you can drive barefoot, interact with natural bodies of water, own multiple large dogs, or see stars at night. Mostly it's just Halstead and a nylon-stringed guitar, recorded with warmth and space to spare, cooing about fireflies and seeing the good in people. You might think it was an insult if I said I'm occasionally put in mind of Jackson Browne, but I'm betting Halstead wouldn't; after all, Jackson Browne wrote Nico's "These Days", and I suspect Halstead's trying to do something similar with "Sometimes the Wheels". Shakers, light drumming, pedal steel, and a few keyboards swoop through, but none of them are looking to mess with the heavy lidded vibe of Halstead's songs and harmonies, whether it's the lush, sunny ones or the starker, darker, Nick Drake-style numbers. These sounds fill up a space beautifully, it's true, hushing all other noise in a way that's hard not to feel contented by-- and decent melodies still seem to be dropping out of Halstead's sleeves as reliably as ever. Put some of these songs on, and you can nearly feel yourself standing in a big empty house on a warm evening, can nearly smell the tea lights.
Only... where oh where's the "mighty"? Even if you haven't been following Halstead down these lines for a while, you might find yourself annoyed by that contentedness, or by the laid-back commonplaces of the lyrics. This is the problem with the beach bum as artist, after all: You get a lot of vague reassurances concerning what life's like (and stabs at bemused charm like "Baby, I Grew You a Beard"), but never do you get anything in the way of fire, of fear, of desolation, of crisis, or of real human detail. Oh! Mighty Engine is endlessly pleasant but oddly faceless, a record strangely free of feeling. Maybe grand gestures just aren't what Halstead's selling with his solo work, sure; there's nothing wrong with soundtracking people's breezy nights this well, especially as a sort of side project. But think back on the records like this that really stick with you, and it's always the ones with a face, a strangeness, an ineffable quality that sets them apart. There are times when Halstead really has that, but this isn't quite one of them.
