Rock bands tend to get spiritual in two very different ways: They either try to storm the pearly gates with a surge of ostentatious orchestration and backing choirs, or, for those who lack the Flaming Lips' recording budget, they try to coax the man upstairs into sitting down for a little one-on-one over some barbecue, whiskey, and sloppy sing-alongs. As the newest entrants to indie-rock's ever-expanding campfire folk circle, Seattle's Cave Singers like to sing of god and country, though only in the vaguest terms. Listening to the trio's Matador Records debut, you get the sense that, for them, singing about the lord is simply as much a prerequisite for roots-music authenticity as their ragged acoustic strums, walking bass lines, and snare-brushed rhythms.
While bassist Derek Fudesco's previous tenures in Murder City Devils and Pretty Girls Make Graves provide the most salient details of the band's back story, the Cave Singers really focus on the voice of one: Pete Quirk, whose endearingly nasal tenor-- think of a less snotty, more stoned Gordon Gano-- is entrusted to carry the band's brittle hymnals. Quirk is prone to stretching his words beyond decipherability, but he's especially effective at communicating that bleary-eyed feeling of darkness turning into dawn: When Quirk sings, "Ooh, thinking of heaven," on Invitation Songs' highly inviting opener, "Seeds of Night", you can practically hear the smile that's spreading across his face, while the closing brass fanfare adds a glint to his teeth.
Quirk's voice lends a peculiar, alien quality to the Singers' otherwise basic, busker-band foundation, though that's not even enough to elevate back-porch stompers like "Dancing on Our Graves" and "Oh Christine" beyond genre exercises. The singer's winsome personality is best revealed on sweet tambourine-tapped serenades like "Cold Eye" and "Elephant Clouds", but the Cave Singers also explore weightier, gloomier territory, with mixed results. The ominous backwoods creeper "New Monuments" is of a piece with Mark Lanegan and Kurt Cobain's Leadbelly makeovers, with a blaring chorus of melodica and harmonica intensifying the song's menacing lurch. Less compelling, however, is the closing funeral march "Called", another melodica-enhanced track on which Quirk over-drowses his voice for dramatic effect-- "oh lord, tear me down," he pleads, but the tremble in his voice makes it difficult to discern the details of his transgressions.
If these songs constitute the Cave Singers' most pronounced attempts at transcending standard folk tropes, it's the gentle, percussion-free lullaby "Helen" that ultimately proves most successful: over a finger-picked melody, Quirk pours his heart out to his titular subject while tremolo effects reverberate around the room, a fitting analog for his quickening pulse. Whether these sorts of modernist intrusions suggest a latent desire to turn into Spiritualized will be revealed on the next Cave Singers album. But even in small, sporadic doses, they lend greater depth and color to Invitation Songs' sepia-toned surface-- and raise the possibility that the Cave Singers' earth-bound aesthetic is perhaps just a temporary state, a prelude to something bigger that they're either too timid to explore just yet, or simply too cash-strapped to indulge.
