So Cow frontman Brian Kelly kicks off The Long Con mumbling half-heartedly about "these kids today." He ends the record with a toast to his old pal "Barry Richardson", whose pub-as-temple theologizing makes the increasingly temperate Kelly just a little jealous. At more than one point on The Long Con, Kelly starts rattling off all the jobs held by his friends and neighbors; these moments play like the tail end of one of those long, winding Sunday afternoon calls home, when you've run through all your personal business and—desperate for material—start catching your mom up on what your friends are up to. Whether he's whiling away an afternoon at the bar with an old Madness record in the background or idly wondering about the inner life of reclusive Queen bassist John Deacon, Kelly seems to be feeling his age throughout The Long Con: he may look the part of a guy in his late twenties, but he can't always seem to see himself in the role. For Kelly, The Long Con is adulthood—with all its attendant mundanity and fatigue—and he's just another mark.
Produced by Deerhoof's Greg Saunier, The Long Con marks both So Cow's first time in the studio and their first LP as a trio, with Kelly's (mostly) one-man show now rounded out with bassist Jonny White and drummer Peter O'Shea. Rarely is the leap from bent-over-a-Tascam lo-fi to proper studio concern made gracefully, but Saunier leaves the oft-scrappy So Cow sounding brighter, more nimble; they bounce between chatty Television Personalities-styled punkers, nimble kiwi-pop-styled soothers, and wistful pub-rockers with ease, with a more than a couple twisted little turnarounds lovingly cribbed from the Deerhoof playbook. From the beginning, Kelly's matched punk energy with austere, to-the-point hookcraft, and on The Long Con, he gets to stretch out a bit: for every two-and-a-half-minute bruiser, there's a sweet, wistful "Sugar Factory" or a moody self-exam like "Vigilanti Cura" showing Kelly's quietly impressive range and breaking up the otherwise frenetic pace.
That said, at 42 minutes, The Long Con would've easily stood up to a more judicious editor; take away several slight—if spirited—pop-punkers padding out the album's midsection, and nobody'd be the wiser. There are a few moments when the studio seems to've gotten the best of Kelly, too; the lengthy feedback blasts at the center of "Second Last Line of the National Anthem" and the churning stoner-rock send-off to "I Want Out" come across as superfluous. Lyrically, Kelly pulls off "sincere" and "sly" with roughly equal success, but at several points throughout The Long Con—particularly the angst-ridden "Turning Into You"—all the personality gets lost in a sea of stock phrases and atypically blunt emotional outbursts.
Still, it's easy to forgive Kelly his indulgences, however minor; this is, after all, the same guy who's trying to limit his intake of "chicken and black-pepper sauce." Throughout The Long Con's story-songs and stray thoughts, Kelly keeps circling around the same idea—specifically, that maybe there's something he ought to be doing besides pissing away another Sunday at the pub, wondering if there's something else he ought to be doing. Should he pack it in, get a job, join the rank-and-file? Or should he ring up his old pal Barry and meet him for a pint or three?
From his perch in the back bar, the faintly bemused, quietly hilarious, easily distractible Kelly tries to figure how he grew old—as old as you feel in your late twenties, anyway—without quite feeling like he grew up. There's no histrionic "what do I stand for?"-style soul-searching on The Long Con; rather, there's just Kelly—a smirk on his face, a little lager on his breath, caught between the 21-year-olds taking birthday shots and the 60-something lifers on their fifth Guinesses—trying to make the most of it. The Long Con is a knobby, scatterbrained listen, but it's got more than enough charm to see you around the rough edges.
