Lots of indie-rap figures wallow in self-pity, bemoan their own bad habits, snap at those who make life hard for them, and somehow find a way to wrap all those emotions up into a resilient shell. But Atmopshere's Slug established a particular knack for it when he broke outside the Twin Cities about a decade back-- every heartfelt line about lonely people or fractured relations was offset by an offhand remark that took some the sting out of his lamentations. Atmosphere got tagged as "emo rap" because there wasn't an easier go-to term for a barfly raconteur with female troubles, but while Slug's lyrics spoke to the same sour impulses that drove teenage misery, they did so through the experiences of someone who discovers to that misery when you grow up.
The catch is that growing up also means growing out of a few things, and The Family Sign catches Slug at a point where he seems to be tilting more towards plainspoken sincerity. The hard-drinking, love-stressed, party-fatigued persona that made him a breakout cult figure 10 years ago might sound somewhere between disingenuous and ridiculous coming from a 38-year-old today. But in stripping some of the more larger-than-life traits of misspent youth away from his approach, he's also lost some of the outsized arrogance and aw-shucks smartassedness that gave his more po-faced moments a three-dimensional context or sharp emotional counterpoint. While The Family Sign has a specific titular focus on loved (and formerly loved) ones and the way people define themselves through them, the real conceptual leap on this album is how patriarch maturity means less jokiness, more earnestness, and a traveled perspective that doesn't leave much room for not giving a fuck.
What room is left winds up parceled out over a couple of highlights. As blunt as the premise is, the negligent alky father meets stoner pickpockets of "Bad Bad Daddy" has a certain caustic bite to it. And the road-ravaged, detail-rich narrative of "Millennium Dodo" evokes the same harebrained excitement-slash-disorientation that made the best moments of 2003's fantastic Seven's Travels stand out. Pointing out his car's mirror-ball décor as an homage to Escape From New York or noting the resemblance between a Best Western clerk and "WKRP in Cincinnati" nebbish Les Nessman is the sort of pop-culture debris that's evocative enough to transcend reference-dropping and hint at the metaphorical reserves in Slug's brain. But the track also starts out with a couplet-- "I only act like an asshole/ Why don't ch'y'all stand back, let the man grow"-- that explains the rest of the album's almost total lack of sardonic edge.
Heartfelt moments haven't necessarily been beyond Slug's grasp-- When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold highlight "Wild Wild Horses" and "Lifter Puller" off Seven's Travels are genuinely moving in a way that few indie-rap love songs are. But here love songs are deployed a bit blank-facedly, strings of clichés, shrugging platitudes and half-thoughts drawn together into a husk of what used to be a compellingly contradictory personality. The idea of a banal yet subtly tense reunion with a long-forgotten ex in "Your Name Here" is undercut by the fact that there's not enough interesting personal details to make Slug's rejected reconnection come across like anything more than a petty dismissal. And while "The Last to Say" is 100% worth hearing if it convinces just one woman to leave the abusive asshole that blackens her eyes, it's weird that it sounds less emotionally invested than the sharp-spitting breakup kissoff "Just for Show".
As Slug's performative role dials down the emotional resonance, the beats have followed suit into a low-intensity churn, one that undercuts what could've been a set of adventurous live-band hip-hop with a uniform lethargy that tops out at mid-tempo. While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs. That latter instrument's maybe the most interesting sonic component of Ant's post-sampling compositional phase, and Nate Collis cranks out Black Keys-ian twang ("Bad Bad Daddy"), psychedelic noir ("My Key"), and eerie slide ("The Last to Say") with versatile ease. And if Erick Anderson's keyboards tend to provide more texture than melody, at least he's as handy with Jackie Mittoo reggae riffs ("Just for Show") as he is with new wave glow ("I Don't Need Brighter Days"). But there's little to cut through the fog-- with the exception of the joy-buzzer jolt of "She's Enough" and the flailing attempt at Nilsson-style AM pop on "Ain't Nobody", this is music that conflates maturity with exhaustion.
