I'm a sucker for bridges and codas. I love their unpredictability, how they insouciantly break with songs' often grid-like verse-chorus-verse panelling. Being struck by one is like venturing beneath 4th street for the first time and finding yourself suddenly deep in quaint, snarled Lower Manhattan, or like discovering a hidden package behind the tree on Christmas morning when you'd given up on getting that Red Rider BB gun. The unexpected detours on Archer Prewitt's new album Wilderness are even better: Rather than simply disregarding convention, Prewitt ingratiates his off-the-beaten-path escapades-- two-minute bridges, codas, and codas of codas-- into coherent form, and the resulting songs are fluid and virtuosic.
This prodigiousness may come as a surprise to those familiar with Prewitt's work. While the Sea and Cake contributor and Chicago denizen has released four accomplished solo albums since 1997, he's never before experimented as confidently with spiraling song structures or adventurous instrumental adornment, and he's seldom approached such heights. The consistency of Wilderness' eleven songs is almost overwhelming. Pick a track: Buried amid a complex topography of busy yet buoyant orchestration and sundry subtleties you're sure to find a sterling hook that would probably sound great even if it were handled fecklessly.
Dusting off the ashes of 2002's coarser Three, opener "Way of the Sun" steals in on a babbling bell melody. Unassumingly, Prewitt joins the fray, strumming and singing as if nothing much has changed-- it's just another humble singer-songwriter album. Out of nowhere comes a titanic, vaguely Dylan-esque chorus-- as memorable and articulate as anything Prewitt has ever done-- and it all comes into focus. Then, a lithe bridge flows in almost like an afterthought-- the first of the album's many dazzling, unforeseen twists.
"Leaders" starts routinely and grows more unconventional with every turn: The song's exceptional chorus is buffered by a stately harpsichord lick. Then the track slows as Prewitt reasserts the chorus at two-thirds speed before tacking on a tiptoeing Dark Side of the Moon coda. "O, KY" turns the trick even better, processing a bouncy, shuffled intro before deciding it would rather be plaintive and bittersweet. Stiffening up and straightening out, the track performs a wild about-face, running through a couple of nervy verses before regrouping for a dramatic finale that puts most prolix rock bands' best riffage and structural histrionics to shame. "Think Again" is Wilderness' darkest song; it also implicates Prewitt's role in the Sea and Cake-- though the song takes just as much of its dusky, open-air vibe from Thrill Jockey brethren Tortoise's TNT.
Part of Wilderness' charm is its trembling near-composure: Prewitt doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Rather, he lets his emotions seep out in brief moments of vulnerability before thinking better of it and curling back up. On "Cheap Rhyme", his vocal snarling is almost flagrant amid so much modesty. True to form, the song funnels out into a regal, horn-driven bridge, but not before Prewitt's weakness becomes apparent. He can't belt, but Wilderness is almost better for it: Although Prewitt doesn't possess James Mercer's earth-shattering tenor or A.C. Newman's hand at pop hooks, those limitations have only led him down a more carefully considered-- and more interesting-- route. His struggle to circumvent has earned him one of the most idiosyncratic and captivating voices in songwriting, and Wilderness is his most focused solo effort yet.
