Tell It to the Dust-- Anders Parker's first solo album under his own name-- begins around the same where it ends, with guitar epics that sprawl about and tug his traditional songwriting into new shapes and lengthy songs. This is not so surprising from the man who fronted both Space Needle and Varnaline-- the former was a spacey rock trio with psychedelic leanings, the latter an earthier counterpart that emphasized alt-country-oriented songs. Tell It to the Dust (which is possibly named for John Fante's Depression-era novel Ask the Dust) follows Varnaline's final bow, 2001's Songs in a Northern Key, and mixes elements of both bands-- especially in the songs that bookend the album.
The record opens with its title track, which features the LP's loveliest melody and catchiest chorus-- both of which are sung in service to lyrics that communicate sober resignation: "I know it's dust to dust/ I know it all will fade/ I know it's built to rust/ and that it all will change." But the track's straightforward accompaniment turns a corner on the coda, as Parker's guitar wrings the drama out of his everyday observations. What began as personal becomes something immense and ascendant. Its counterpart, the closing "Doornail (Hat's Off to Buster Keaton)", works a murky blues riff into a nearly eight-minute jam, but remains grounded and mired in the mud, creating a very different kind of drama as Parker sings about how "time won't change a thing." Both songs inhabit the same emotional space, but the musical terrain is strikingly different.
The 10 songs between "Tell It to the Dust" and "Doornail" don't reach the heights of those two, but they do reflect the tension between Parker's restlessness and his need for strictly defined musical structures. Parker lets various instruments define different songs, which not only lends each track its own distinctive personality, but also gives the whole an added dynamic. "Feel the Same" fades out on a George Harrison guitar line, and "Into the Sun" rides a ponderous guitars riff that threatens psychedelia.
Kendall Meade's piano and Joan Wasser's violin make "Innocents" sound even more fragile, and kudos to Parker for using the words "sunbeam" and "moonbeam" unironically. If any song on Tell It to the Dust could have fallen flat, it's this one, which is a warble away from Counting Crows/Five for Fighting schmaltz. Yet in the context of these hard-luck songs (especially followed by the reassurances of "Don't Worry Honey, Everything's Gonna Be Alright"), it succeeds as a tender ode to childhood and a lament over the hardships of adulthood.
Despite his warring urges for both making and breaking form, Parker doesn't reinvent or even update the nearly dormant alt-country genre, but he does gently nudge it: Tell It to the Dust tweaks his sound just enough to make it sound not ambitious or innovative, but deeply personal, like something only he-- and not Space Needle, Varnaline, or anyone else-- could have recorded.
