Conor Oberst's Saddle Creek label has become a Neverland of sorts, a conduit for precocious 90s teen-rockers like himself to produce albums that echo the desperation and despair of a 16-year-old. Maybe I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning was supposed to be Oberst's (and possibly Saddle Creek's) transition from bumpkin adolescent malcontent to world-weary traveler, but there's too much Holden Caulfield pathos permeating the album to signify a major persona reconstruction. Likewise, Maria Taylor's been spewing out WB-style melodrama with Saddle Creek darlings Azure Ray and Now It's Overhead for the last half decade, creating somber, gooey music fit for the closing credits of any "Gilmore Girls" episode. 11:11, however, hardly pretends to be Taylor's heady, "grown-up" solo album, but rather an expanded cross-section of her Azure Ray and Now It's Overheard contributions.
Taylor's strengths and weaknesses are completely exposed on the album, most notably her tendency to focus on melody and allow the instrumentation to mire in the background. Opener "Leap Year" demonstrates this imbalance perfectly. Convoluted strings, synthesizers, and piano lethargically float over a limp electronic percussion foundation. Meanwhile, Taylor drenches each of her breathily sung lyrics with dewy-eyed melancholy, allowing the vocals to steer the track rather than the nearly homogenous chord progression. After Taylor wistfully gasps the song's final lyrics "PleaseÉcomeÉsoon", the song's emotional force stalls over a 45-second instrumental outro.
Fortunately, Taylor's tentative electronica dabbling only affects "Leap Year" and the lead-footed "dance" track "One for the Shareholder," which blatantly ignores the perils of Oberst's mediocre Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. "Nature Song" and "Birmingham 1982," on the other hand, showcase Taylor sticking with what she knows-- organic Southern-flavored folk pop. Sure, Taylor's just reinventing the wheel with these tracks, but nowhere else on the album does such synergy exist between her swollen melodies and humble acoustic.
Of course, not even these moments can conceal the one degree of separation between Saddle Creek and "Dawson's Creek". "Song Beneath the Song" takes cues from B-level James Van Der Beek dialogue, repeating "it's not a love song" over a monotonous, textbook I-IV-V chord progression. With its innocuous piano and hooks rounded off into drawn-out cooing, "Hitched" is a Cat Power song lined with Styrofoam-- just too damn safe. On select tracks, Taylor may show boldness and an independency from Azure Ray and Now It's Overhead, but ultimately 11:11 settles for pandering to the backpack-toting, drama-thirsty WB demographic that has dovetailed so immaculately with the Saddle Creek universe.
