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The Long Winters return with 12 songs about waiting 30 June 2003
John Roderick knows pain and knows how to convey it. But he’s a happy guy. The nexus of opposites leads him to make music you can sink your emotional teeth into, often pairing bouncy, happy sonics with dark, penetrating language; or dreamy minimalism with sung poetry. Even the title of his second album with his Seattle-based band The Long Winters pursues this pattern, in its way: When I Pretend To Fall (lifted from an internal lyric that goes “She laughs when I pretend to fall). You scan it superficially and it’s vaguely arrogant, if innocent, wordplay, or you think about it and start to see inside the heart of an ambivalent man in search of himself. The Long Winters are a tight four piece when on the road. But as he did for the band’s 2002 debut, on the new disc Roderick has once again assembled an exceptional collective in the studio, roughly along the lines of The Reindeer Section—Gary Lightbody’s Glasgow-based collective. Contributors on When I Pretend To Fall include Ken Stringfellow of The Posies (and of R.E.M.’s and Big Star’s touring bands, and an outstanding solo artist in his own right); Jon Auer, also of The Posies (and soon to release his solo debut); Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie; Peter Buck of R.E.M.; Scott McCaughey of Minus 5; experimental/improvisational trumpet player Dave Carter; and on and on—more than two dozen players in all. And like The Reindeer Section, The Long Winters, amazingly, sound nothing like an artist-ego free-for-all but instead all pull in exactly the same direction. The musical coherence of each song on this disc is stunning, and the gestalt of the full set all the more so. By my reading this is very much a concept album… about time, waiting, and loss. Roderick seems to give this away in the first song, Blue Diamonds, with its call-and-response chorus, Roderick singing “You’re so good at waiting” overlaid with Ken Stringfellow’s double-entendre “It’s about time!” Every song here—from the piano, voice, and noise guitar Nora; to the Neil Young-cum-Beatles Blanket Hog; to the Motown horns-and-organ dance energy of Scared Straight—mentions time or waiting, implicitly or explicitly. There’s “...you have no idea how stupid I would feel if 15 years from now I see her and she says, 'Why didn’t it ever happen between us, stupid?'” There’s “Now that a year has gone, see how the blanket’s worn.” There’s “She showed up for our date five years late.” And there’s “Three thousand, six hundred and fifty odd days I waited. Time, I did my time.” Extruding this lyrical fascination with time along another dimension, Roderick and company pursue a great deal of sly musical referencing to a catalog of periods in rock history including Motown, glam, the rise of California folk-rock, and those dim, distant years when the most important question was whether you liked the Beatles or The Stones. On the song Cinnamon, Roderick flays open his heart for the world to see, telling a tale of heartbreak that (in reality or fiction) sent him to a hospital where his conversation with a therapist becomes the basis for the strongest rock chorus I’ve heard in years. I have too many stories, keeping it seriousRecently, this song was nothing less than cathartic for me when I had some emotions that needed to come out but couldn’t. Rockbites no longer gives ratings, but this album, and this song in particular, did change my life. Your mileage may vary. But this brings up one of the most interesting things about this album: the critical reaction it has drawn since its US release on 6 May. Reviewers love it or hate it. You will, too. I’ll hazard a guess that the braver you are about facing down your own emotional demons, the more you’ll appreciate these songs and Roderick’s honesty. Oh—I have to mention the super cool, happy ’60s psychedelic CD insert with texturized cover art and chock full of drawings, collages, quirky typography, and complete lyrics. Very nice. | The Long Winters | | Barsuk Records | | Blue Diamonds (full length MP3) | | Rockbites review of LW's first LP | | top of page | |
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