Back in the days when I rabidly followed basketball, the yearly NBA all-star game stood out as a particular pet peeve. Granted, it was a chance to see the game's finest playing their best. But, as an idealistic young fan, I couldn't get over the fact that it didn't really matter. I couldn't bear to see players who spent the rest of the year cursing and beating the shit out of each other playing on the same team. Despite a few coast-related rivalries, the game was really just a trap for fans and their money.
At first, All Most Heaven struck me as not too different from the all-star game. The credits gracing the back of the record are a who's-who of indie recording artists, including Jim O'Rourke, Bill Callahan, Archer Prewitt, David Grubbs, "recorder" Steve Albini and, of course, Will Oldham. So how did Chestnut Station frontman Rian Murphy manage to recruit all these illustrious names for assistance on his record, including the notoriously feuding Grubbs and O'Rourke? Well, not only is Murphy a big shot at Drag City Records, but he's also lent his production talents to artists like Edith Frost (who also appears on this record), the Silver Jews, and Palace Music. Plus, this was recorded in Chicago, a place known for its artist collaborations.
It's a good thing, too, because it's the presence of Murphy's stellar collaborators that truly makes the four-song All Most Heaven a relatively tasty morsel. Jim O'Rourke's instrumental arrangements are both lush and refreshing, augmented no doubt by the amazing pool of players O'Rourke had to choose from. Indeed, every instrument here is played and arranged almost perfectly. All Most Heaven's few serious flaws lie not in instrumentation or production, but rather in a few songwriting missteps that prevent the record from approaching the sum of its contributors.
Within the first few seconds of "Fall Again," a duet between Oldham and Bill Callahan, Oldham's presence is made quite clear by the very Oldham-ish piano arrangement, not to mention his vocals. And while the song may bear quite a striking resemblance to an Oldham solo tune, it lacks that inexplicable quality that makes him one of the great songwriters of the moment. Rarely does the song, or any of All Most Heaven, hit a sour note, but it somehow lacks the significance and emotion of Oldham's work. Of course, there's a good possibility that my listening has been slanted by the way Oldham's voice sounds on this record. In the past, the shaky, warbling tones of Oldham's voice have given him a unique personality. And at a few points, such as on the chorus of "Song of Most," this holds true. Unfortunately, his voice seems to be lacking both the relative tonality and the emotion found on previous works.
But if All Most Heaven doesn't get credit for its vocals, it certainly does for its lyrics. While I initially thought that Oldham was just singing incoherently, a quick glance at the album's liner notes revealed that the line, "Ess for da beda/ Basted ada deedle eye/ For the way to be hated/ Is abated audobye," is written exactly as spoken. With so many painfully self-aware lyrics being penned these days, guttural sounds such as this are, if nothing else, a welcome change.
So perhaps my initial assessment of All Most Heaven was wrong. Had this truly been an all-star record, it would have been marketed as such. As it stands, All Most Heaven marks a very shrewd move by Rian Murphy-- with a little help from his friends, he and Will Oldham have managed to turn a batch of four merely average songs into an above-average record.
