An anecdote from rock criticism’s first decade has stayed alive in the post-rock era. The story is that Robert Christgau reviewed Simon & Garfunkel’s
Bridge Over Troubled Water with a solitary word: “Melodic.” A common reading of that story turns the critic’s brevity into a Spinal Tap-style critical burn. But it’s possible that nothing more needed to be said about the album.
S. Carey’s
Hundred Acres is melodic. That’s not to say it’s equal to Bridge Over Troubled Water. Or Pink Moon. Or any album from folk-rock’s foundational period. Here, the question of “what more is there to say” belongs not so much to the critic as it does to the artist trying to create something new from a style whose best examples are often spare and simple. What does Sean Carey’s new album add or take away?
Outside of his solo efforts, Carey contributes to Bon Iver as a drummer, keyboardist, and singer. Those are significant contributions, particularly in the
22, A Million live sets, which were more memorable and musically arresting than anything that appears on a Bon Iver studio album. Yet Hundred Acres exhibits none of the percussive force of those shows. The biography/press release for the album contextualizes the “simplification” of the songwriting within “a desire to reach for the utopia of simplicity”. Oddly, the lengthy press release offers more than a thousand words to describe that simplicity. Why is it necessary to say so much about music designed to be simple?
The effectiveness of
Hundred Acres rests entirely on how prepared a listener is to tune in to an album whose defining feature is the sanding down of any edges and angles that might distinguish it from other background sounds and music. Nature seems to be a theme of many of the songs here, but as produced, the songs go back to nature by disappearing into dust. Only the melodies hold the particles together, but the arrangements and production smooth nearly every song out to a uniform hum.
Thus
Hundred Acres is melodic, but little more than that. Tuneful nature albums needn’t disappear like this. Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther and The Courage of Others probably belong in the category Carey is exploring here, but their execution feels otherworldly by comparison. Raw nature albums can stand out, too. Last year, Liars’ TFCF was a solo return to form by Angus Andrew who assembled the album “in the bush, in amongst trees, looking out over the ocean”.
An upside of Carey’s approach is that it will appeal to listeners seeking either contemporary smooth folk, like the music of Jack Johnson, or something reminiscent of the melodies and harmonies of pop music’s past. “Hideout” contains a brief but potent trace of Toto’s “Africa”, which seems appropriate given Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon’s’ ongoing project in (re)canonizing the songwriters and sounds of 1980s chart hits. Perhaps befitting this safe, moderate approach, the dead center of the album contains the two most dynamic and modern-sounding compositions, “Emery” and “Hundred Acres”.
Carey’s position with
Hundred Acres is similar to Philip Selway’s profile as a solo artist that also plays drums for a well-known more experimental band (in Selway’s case, it’s Radiohead). Selway’s albums are catchy and perfectly serviceable but too often stuck in a single gear. Maybe albums such as these are instances of drummers wanting to show that their skills go beyond providing the vital pulse for someone else’s tunes. This time out, Carey sheds the vital to prioritize the simple, and simple melodies aren’t substantial enough to fill A Hundred Acres.