As North Dakota's most prolific son has faithfully exhibited for over a decade, with a near Hollywood-scripted fearlessness: A man alone can charter a dangerous commodity. Adulteration is always a concern for a talent whose work is crosshatched with such distinctly rendered spiritual and philosophical allegiances, but when he drew up plans for Hope You Fail Better-- an album that would further explore the same intimate themes of frustrated devotion and mortality that haunted 2002's dauntless Baby's Breadth-- he chose, for the first time, to enlist a steady cast of players to tour and record the album. Thankfully, this decision hasn't diluted the unsettling potency of his vision, which unfolds as feverishly as ever; rather, it breathes new life into his usual message.
Crafting a lonely funereal strain for the opening stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music", Panic's opener instantly digs into his earthworn philosophy. Millay, typically known for her precocious sexuality and malcontent's bohemian sensibilities, here offers no resignation to death's inevitable calling, and Panic delivers her words acutely and mournfully. His conversional bent sobers the text's underlining message, and plays excellently as an introduction to Panic's dusty temperance.
The brisk fever of "Let My Lungs Coin Words" is the first indication that his decision to expand was not ill-forged. Panic sounds renewed and even transcendent as, with the help of producer Daniel Smith of The Danielson Famile, Panic's elfin, Dylanesque warble rises just enough above the jangling sway to project itself fitfully. "Breach Birth Control", "The World Is Not a Place", and "Paint Legs on the Snake" rollick, too, while Panic even utilizes handclaps, though the mood never truly lightens.
Fettered both by fears of dying and of not truly living, Panic teetertotter's his way through the recording. The album's true voice might be heard through "Both Sides of the Paper" and "On 'H's' They", where you can hear gusts of wind pass portentously through weathered windvanes as Panic reports, with Jason Molina-esque conviction, "Every new day is further from where you can go to be with those that died." He sweeps death under the rug with the closing four tracks, the strongest batch on the album. Each hems in a line Panic has sewn into his intensely personal brand of distorted alt-country for all of Hope: "Getting Over Joy"'s slick slide guitar line, the inflated grandeur of "Expensive Attic", and the ponderous call to death of "Leaving Me My Eyes" all anchor the mood that almost ballooned away in the middle of the album-- though in no way due to any relenting philosophical exploration. He simply sounds more alive than ever.
The gentle, clean swabs of acoustic guitar and saloon-slapped piano on "That's the Moon, Son" end the album with his most traditional structure and message. It feels like an answer, or at least a call to a drifter's end, a solidification of thought. You may not be swaying like paper in the winds of change, or ruminating daily on the distance you've marked for death, but for the duration of Hope You Fail Better, you'll swear you are.
