In the ocean of our aching, it sometimes rises as towering clouds that soon become violent storms, then fizzles out once it meets something as firm and tangible as land. Searows, the alias of Portland singer-songwriter Alec Duckart, is a veteran sailor in this vast and vile body of water, especially that in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the world that he aspires to conjure in his melancholic music, and Death in the Business of Whaling, his second effort, sees to its ongoing realisation. “Destroyer of what’s in front of me,” he sings of those storms on the recent single “Photograph of a Cyclone”, arguably the most breathtaking outcome of his voyage yet. You won’t hear anything in his discography as lush and gorgeous as it.
While Guard Dog lingered in serene and hushed production, Death in the Business of Whaling is braver and bolder in its implosive expressions. Trevor Spencer (the engineer behind Beach House’s and Father John Misty’s projects) co-produces with Duckart, and his atmospheric sensibility can be felt throughout the record’s dense fog. Its opening track, “Belly of the Whale”, already radiates with newfound confidence via the hazy ensemble of classical-folk sensations. The instrumental rises and falls on “Dearly Missed” fittingly embody subtle yet impactful waves of the sea. For once, some of the songs here feel unmistakably Searows for their evocation of a specific geography and its windy, grimy sentiments.
Yet when the grandeur of rip-tide production is absent, Duckart again inadvertently falls into the familiar grounds on which other artists have trodden. On “Kill What You Eat” and “Dirt”, his voice remains invariably pensive as opposed to, say, that on the abovementioned songs, where we hear more of his range in both pitch and emotion. Comparison to Phoebe Bridgers, who’s patented this desolate vocal style for years, will be inevitable. His apparent penchant for melodic stasis on “Junie” and “Geese” also recalls Ethel Cain’s work at times. With additional subdued flourishes, he and Spencer could’ve made them more distinctively theirs.
The Pacific Northwest is renowned for its unique and complex landscapes and coastlines. Perhaps more overt (though not necessarily daring) sonic experiments would’ve made more songs here closer to Duckart’s intriguing reference point. This is the main reason why his ambitious and endlessly potent worldmaking project is still incomplete. His songwriting already hits in places where it should, even if there’s room for more piercing and precise observations. The imagery of a forest sucking an orange on “Hunter”, for example, distracts from rather than directs the listener to the guttural feeling of having no agency in one’s doing. He’s at his best when tracks uncoil like little vignettes, leaving small clues that pile up towards the end.
Such are “Photograph of a Cyclone” and “Dearly Missed”, both of which resist linear storytelling. It suits Duckart well since he tends to write lyrics as if they were his immediate journal entries; there’s an elegant rawness and an emotive power to his words only possibly achieved by stuttering them out in streams. “God-awful without permanence / I convince myself to need you,” he sings on the former directly to sadness, or any aching in the world. “Circling the corner of the room.” In a way, his songs as Searows are cyclones produced from this mournful ocean. Some are feeble, some are powerful; Duckart bears witness to all by standing there, like in the cover, looking hopelessly for the eye of his own internal turbulence.
