The Week in Albums: Apr. 1

As you may know, yesterday was Opening Day for many baseball teams, including my beloved Seattle Mariners. In all that excitement, I literally forgot that it was Friday and time for some album reviews. Here they are one, day late.

#1
Last of the Country Gentlemen
Josh T. Pearson
Mute Records

I had no idea who Josh T. Pearson was before this week. For those of you in a similar boat, here are the highlights: Pearson is a Texan songwriter, who started the acclaimed band Lift to Experience and recorded a single, acclaimed album with them in 2001. Since that time, he's worked with Bat for Lashes and Dirty Three amongst other artists. Last of the Country Gentlemen is his first solo album. And damn is it a good'un. Pearson's bleak, stripped down songs stand in sharp contrast to the spit-shined pablum that the radio calls country music. Despite only featuring seven tracks, Gentlemen is almost an hour long, making the album a bit of an endurance test. Eleven-minute ruminations on relationships and emotional distress are pretty standard here. But the songcraft, lyricism and Pearson's dynamic voice make each song worth the running times. These are beautiful, sad, twangy songs, in veil of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. In seven brief days, Josh T. Pearson has gone from being all-but unknown to releasing one of the year's best albums.

Simon's Grade:



#2
All Eternals Deck
The Mountain Goats
Merge Records

You always know what you're getting with a Mountain Goats record. John Darnielle's veteran indie-rock band has sounded more or less the same for a full decade and All Eternals Deck does nothing to shake up the formula. Warm acoustic guitar and piano melodies are complimented by light drumming, while Darnielle's snarling, nasal voice delivers hyper-literate vignettes about whatever complex metaphor Darnielle's stumbled upon lately. Coming on the heels of 2009's The Life of the World to Come, All Eternals Deck does feel slightly disappointing. The Biblical themes and clever concept of World to Come is missed here, since most Mountain Goats' songs start to sound very similar over the course of a forty-minute album. Opening track "Damn These Vampires" is a highlight, but nothing on the album transcends the strict genre that the band operates within. Eternals isn't a bad album, but it's album that sounds strangely familiar, recreating the band's basic elements without adding anything new.

Simon's Grade:



#3
Belong
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Slumberland Records

New York's the Pains of Being Pure at Heart surprised everyone with their confident and endlessly charming debut two years ago. Sunny and cheerful without being annoying and childish, that album sounded like some bizarro world Belle & Sebastian, where that lilting Scottish band discovered the sheer, undiluted awesomeness of electric guitars. Now, two years later, the Pains have returned with their sophomore album. Despite a flurry of good reviews and a Best New Music honor from Pitchfork, it's difficult for me to hear Belong as anything other than disappointing. Gone are the detailed lyrical stories and dynamic instrumentation. The Pains feel stuck in high gear, churning out loud, 90s guitar rock at the expense of their more subtle inclinations. Other songs, like "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now" sound like note-for-note rehashes of songs from their first album. The hooks are gone, the melodies are gone and all we have to replace them is sheer volume. That pesky sophomore slump is in full effect here.

Simon's Grade: