Bro, Do You Even Music?
Google Play Music All Access is so technically frustrating while remaining one of my happiest monthly expenses. Getting two seconds into a song and then skipping to the next one, the failed downloads, the inability to listen reliably while downloading.
I feel a general lack of genuine passion within Google’s products, like they’re seen as technical challenges versus “making something cool happen for people who love that thing.” I could be wrong, but I feel no soul in the design.
I don’t see why we subscribers don’t get some notifications about albums released by bands with heavy representation and playtime in our libraries. I mean, Nickel frigging Creek released an album this year and I just found out about it because I basically clicked the wrong button while pulling up Alison Krauss music.
A Dotted Line is encouraging, 1.5 songs in. Sara’s voice and general effect (in “Destination”) seems to have aged and improved the best of the three, although Sean will always be my favorite vocal talent in the group. Of their later work, I much prefer the pop-leaning modern Sara sound to the “hippie campfire” thing that I often felt at lower points of Why Should the Fire Die? (as in the middling opener to Line, “Rest of My Life”). Fire is kind of a sad album to listen to, a eulogy for the run of creative energy featured in their earlier work.
But now I get to “Elsie”, and I’m like, “hot damn, we’re back somewhere between Nickel Creek and This Side” and I don’t think I will pause even if the phone rings or someone’s at my door.
“Christmas Eve” is Sean in Fiction Family form and Fire format but without the Switchfootiness of Fiction Family. Back at the campfire a bit, but a better, less hippie campfire.
“Hayloft” is terrible. The only thing that redeems it is that it’s a cover. I think that redeems it. Oh, it’s awful. Ow. Uncomfortable. One of those covers where you can hear the original version in the cover, even though you never heard the original, and you can realize that both the original and the cover are awful, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It makes you want to go back to “Spit on a Stranger” (This Side) to get a feel for playfulness in a well-executed wacky Nickel Creek cover.
“21st of May” is pretty good. “Love of Mine” is vintage Fire-era Chris, which is alright, and Sara is on point for background vocals better than she was in Fire. Sean’s guitar feels a little heavier-mixed than in previous albums, and it’s a welcome development. Sara’s ornamental fiddle in the background always has a twinge of irritation for me that’s reliably assuaged by her lovely feature/solo work. Bringing guitar up to the front in these moments soothes the sound for me.
“Elephant in the Corn” is precisely the instrumental you want from the thirty-something version of the “kids” from Nickel Creek. I mean, “Elsie” is most certainly better in spirit, but this provides both a higher level of musical sophistication, some playfulness in a more somber setting, and a final distancing from the dumpster fire of “Hayloft,” from which I still ache despite multiple songs and one phone call interruption.
“You Don’t Know What’s Going On” may well be the song of the album (sorry, “Elsie”), not because it’s more sublime than “Elsie”, or more sophisticated than “Elephant in the Corn”, or because it actually has vocals, but because it represents where this cool and round-hole-square-peg group could go, find additional notoriety, make some more money, get on the radio, whatever. It’s smart, bluegrass-influenced, folk-pop with energy and playfulness. Solid, great.
And we end on “Where is Love Now”, which is apparently the second cover of the album, but you’d never know it. It’s Fire earnest Sara (a la “Anthony”), a bitter taste but with a sweet chaser this time. Sean’s guitar is transcendent, like smash-your-own-guitar-and-just-quit-while-you’re-behind kind of good. It’s Nickel Creek telling you, “Thanks for waiting, we’re back, we’re better, see you soon.”
Thanks for coming back. Stay as long as you stay happy.