Adam Schatz, the leading force behind Landlady, is short, spasmodic, and intense. Onstage, his whole body often balls up like a fist, and his eyes bug open like someone receiving shock therapy. His voice occupies some middle distance between a young Randy Newman and an older Morrissey, yowling up into fluttery melismas and then settling into a barrel-chested belt. He's emotionally generous and theatrical, his musical ambitions too on the-sleeve to fit comfortably in the circumspect land of indie rock. Landlady move through their second record Upright Behavior like the USS Sincerity, offering to share with you in your biggest fears: death, loneliness, lack of purpose.
Musically, they occupy a big middle space always in need of willing entrants: brainy, melodic pop-rock. Their arrangements, full of hard lefts and detours, pack paragraphs full of ideas into five minutes. Landlady songs are eventful, with chorales and middle eights opening up like big yellow umbrellas. On the fidgety, starched-collar "Dying Day", the hard downbeat repeatedly evaporates into a flutter of cartoon bluebirds. On "Under the Yard", the band stops playing so the members can sing a chorale based around the phrase "Next to the tomato seeds is where I count my sheep," like an eccentric vocal warm-up exercise.
The band is an impressive battalion, and they move from mallet percussion to violin to keyboards with the nimbleness of a traveling theater troupe. The songs jump-cut from moment to moment, often landing in a different key or time signature out of the clear blue. The transitions sound clearly influenced by Smile, and sometimes, Upright Behavior feels like Schatz's attempt to make three Smiles at once. There are moments, here and there, where beleaguered listeners might wish for a few more full stops, fewer semicolons and embedded parentheticals.
What saves Landlady's music from being swallowed by stagecraft is Schatz. He writes big hooks that hover like big neon signs over his bustling songs, and each one frames a glowing homily: "We just want someone to turn on" (from "Girl") or "Where do I go when the blood won't go far enough to reach my heart?" ("Under the Yard"). "You and me, in the flood/ We survive," he sings, in a triumphantly up-swelling melody on "Upright Behavior", taking the phrase through it's melodic paces until he has plumbed every possible meaning out of them—wonder, disbelief, regret, defiance, gratitude. "Please, allow me to believe in something bigger than my appetite," he pleads on "Fine". He comes across like Kevin Barnes, if Barnes were less arch and more concerned with cheering up your depressed great-aunt than with subversion. Upright Behavior is Schatz's attempt go pack as much of this essence into one space as possible, and it comes on like a combination Chinese finger trap and bear hug.
