Seattle-based singer/songwriter Rocky Votolato knows well the downside of progress. Last year, an early, incompleted version of his new album fell into the nefarious clutches of internet file-traders, effectively KILLING MUSIC. Undaunted, the nonjudgmental 28-year-old father of two soldiered ahead to finish work on these stark, essentially acoustic songs, adding a couple of new ones and jettisoning others, while erstwhile Pedro the Lion multi-instrumentalist Casey Foubert provided understated production. Now seeing official release on Barsuk, the completed Makers strains against time's passage, as rural Texas native Votolato alternately whispers and rasps stories about boxcars, train tracks, mining towns, dirt roads, and "Frisco," accompanied by little more than a dusty harmonica. Unfortunately, bare-bones arrangements, train songs, and good intentions are no shortcut to supposed authenticity, and still less are they a guarantor of overall quality.
The rootsy route isn't new to Votolato, whose former band Waxwing traversed wider pastures than their emo peers (even if I used to confuse them with Knapsack). 2003's Chris Walla-produced Suicide Medicine had more rocking moments, but Votolato's first solo songs, like 2001's "Crabtree and Evelyn", already foretold his current unplugged direction-- even if they were more Dashboard Confessional than railroad hymn. Still, innumerable nostalgists have hammered this spike in recent years, from the likes of Iron & Wine, Josh Ritter, and Kings of Convenience to Hayden, Damien Jurado, and Damien Rice-- not to mention the entire alt-country movement. Given the competition, mere earnestness isn't enough.
With his fingerpicking low and percussion scarce, Votolato cedes the spotlight to his songwriting. However, a penchant for copywriter wordplay stacks Makers with a freight train full of awkwardness. "The bones inside your mind were all broken" sits clumsily atop the title track's steel guitar, while Votolato's narrator is "a punchline who's punchdrunk" on catchier, harmonica-soaked "Portland Is Leaving", in "the kind of comedy where no one's laughing, because it's hard to." Um, in this case it doesn't take a lot to laugh. A deft metaphor comparing clouds to "stilts or crutches, I don't know which one" on "The Night's Disguise" and death cleverly claiming "anything that life didn't already take" on "Wait Out the Days" can't reestablish Votolato's troubadour credentials after a few too many such doozies.
Another trouble is that Votolato's songs sometimes sound less like their presumed rustic inspirations than the middle-of-the-road 1990s bands they influenced. To be sure, "She Was Only in It for the Rain" (moronically credited to "Piss Pissedoffherson" but notable for its ghostly Southern gothic verses), non-leaked addition "White Daisy Passing", and especially placid pastoral "The Uppers Aren't Necessary Anymore" reek of Sam Beamish hush and Garfunkadelic harmonies. Cool, the intricate guitar coda of "Streetlights" alights near "Blackbird". But frankly, Votolato's clear, all-American vocals amid the acoustic-pop backdrop of "Goldfield" brings to mind fellow Texans and one-time college-circuit idols Jackopierce; the way he intermittently goes hoarse for emphasis reminds me of another Southwestern band with that tendency, and by the time the maudlin "I'm really leaving" conclusion kicks in I'm wishing the track sounded more like the Gin Blossoms (don't hate).
Oh yeah, SPOILER ALERT, the closing song reveals that the title of Makers refers to the whiskey. A deeper, more philosophical meaning is doubtless implied secondarily, but then again Votolato does ask us to pass him a "bottle" of the stuff. Either way it would require some stiff swigs indeed to deny that musical Ludditism is sometimes just atavism, and that a super-slo-mo HDTV close-up, far from being an end in itself, only ends up benefiting those with the fewest warts. "Sounds too simple, but love is the only answer," Votolato insists. Fair enough, but I bought that record already-- what part of another simple maxim, "make it new," don't you understand?
