Breaking Out of the Mold

Don’t bother with the bomb that Pitchfork will inevitably lob at Travis Morrison’s second solo outing, All Y’all. In 2004, when Pitchfork critic Chris Dahlen savaged the artist’s first solo record, Travistan, with an insulting 0.0, the upstart music webzine proved that it took its role as kingmaker seriously—and it had found a dragon to slay. To be sure, Travistan wasn’t a great record. Released after the breakup of the critically acclaimed The Dismemberment Plan, Morrison’s solo outing was a mess of awkward and disjointed ideas. But the instruments were in tune, the disc didn’t skip, etc.—it didn’t merit a lemon rating.

Granted, that’s just one review, but Pitchfork issues forth from an inordinately high perch. Whether or not Morrison was inclined to take any advice from critics, empty shows and dismal returns surely had some effect. And in the time between the first and second solo records, he reconsidered some things. After experimenting with an all synth-and-rhythm section, Morrison has (to the cheers of fans everywhere) picked up his guitar again. He settled on some new collaborators, whom he’s dubbed Hellfighters. He joined a church (well, a choir). But if All Y’all is any indication, Morrison hasn’t had a sound-changing, come-to-Jesus moment—Hellfighters is an improvement, but he is still searching.

It’s clear that on this record, as it has been since The Dismemberment Plan Are Terrified and !, the earliest Dismemberment Plan records, that Morrison will always carry his projects with his voice. The levels on his pipes express a range from “concern” to “panic,” and fans sing (or shout) along as he transitions from confessional, speak-sing verse to screamy, freak-out chorus. Crucially, his voice also serves as a go-to percussion instrument. “I’m Not Supposed to Like You (But),” the opening track on All Y’all, is a 12-bar blues number. Hand drumming and a soulful organ make for a Caribbean feel on the AABA verse. But after the straight-laced couplet (no jazzy swing on his eighth notes), Morrison delivers the B line in a jarring, staccato triplet, his crisply enunciated words registering like a jackhammer. The noisy bridge, exacerbated by a blaring saxophone section, is nearly an afterthought—the 12-bar-blues explosion serves as the package for Morrison’s jarring delivery.

Morrison’s vocal playfulness has never competed with his lyrics. The frenetic “You Make Me Feel Like a Freak” would feel at home on the Plan’s Emergency & I, the most frantic rock record in Morrison’s catalog. “Freak” hums along in minor key, with palm-muted strumming, soft synth bleeps, and name-dropping lyrics (“Here we are, where, there, yeah, standing at the bar/She says, ‘Hey, don’t you work for NPR?’”). That his hook-up lyrics suggest a narrator with believable trepidations about sex is all the more remarkable, as Morrison is delivering his meditation on fetishes in his notable throat scream.

“Catch Up,” a song featuring a strained, high-pitched shout on the chorus and a low-key synth riff, might be the artist’s ode to David Byrne—if it weren’t for the offensively out-of-place hypeman, whose shout-out comes from out of nowhere. This is the bad Morrison who critics chastised after the first solo record: The Morrison who isn’t content to leave well enough alone. It can be done—a number of Del Tha Funky Homosapien rock collaborations come to mind—but it seems, again, like an afterthought. The hip-hop hype notwithstanding (it really is awkwardly bad), “Catch Up” is otherwise a bit cool and a bit detached for a songwriter of Morrison’s talents.

That talented songwriter emerges in fits and starts. “As We Proceed” is a throwback: A three-note punk riff verse that resolves in sustained chords on the chorus (a Morrison hallmark). He croons about social anxiety and professional jitters in a way that seems familiar and oddly comforting. On “East Side of the River,” Morrison tells a story about love and longing over the racial divide, but the narrative gets a bit confused. And there’s something sweet about his senior love advice on “Churchgoer”: “Follow the girl who loves you too/ Not more and not less, just different.” But the holla-back synth chorus and marching-band drumline call for a baton-wielding drum major, not a contemplative storyteller—and the narrative aspect of the song gets buried. Morrison might be catching it on the jaw, but his tongue is still firmly planted in cheek. His second album finds him taking it in stride.

Antoine Bédard, a composer who performs under the handle Montag, recognizes the lucrative spirit of fraternité that characterizes today’s Canadian rock-and-roll scene. With so many French-Canadian rising stars listed as collaborators on Going Places, you might believe it was a product of the state tourism board, not the solo artist’s second record. As it happens, Bédard never quite realizes the right benefit of collaboration: By recording and engineering the album entirely himself, he’s forsaken the sort of editorial voice that might have suggested he make better use of his guests. Bédard brings in one of the most intriguing female vocalists around—labelmate Victoria Legrand (Beach House)—for “> [Plus Grand Que]”, but she only contributes a soft, atmospheric, background chant. Amy Millan (Stars, Broken Social Scene) graces several songs, but when she sings out (such as on “Safe and Sound”), Bédard’s vocals sound casual and faint by comparison. It seems contradictory to invite guests onto the project but then have to play down their talents. But Bédard does strike the right note on “Softness, I Forget Your Name,” a duet with the velvet-voiced Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy). Pallett’s mellifluous voice blends well with Bédard’s generic, clean, almost ambivalent tone. Perhaps Bédard recognizes that his vocals need some buffer against the inevitable comparisons to Stereolab’s détachement. Certainly, his strengths are to be found in his compositions, comprising straight-up laptop pop (like the Postal Service but academic) and orchestration in moderation (like Grizzly Bear but cosmopolitan).

It must be hard to be friends with Stars. Their latest record, In Our Bedroom After the War, drips with the heavy drama that makes newfound love-doves and recent relationship refugees alike such dreadful company. On “My Favourite Book,” Amy Millan taps both veins simultaneously when she coos, “You can make my bed/I’ll fall into you/Shattered but not lonely.” The song continues with lyrics that might make Lionel Ritchie blush. In Our Bedroom After the War finds the beloved Montreal quintet settled into a groove that even devoted fans may find unsettling: Easy, adult, contemporary pop.

Like an emotionally exhausted lounge act, co-singers Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan trade heavy verses and choruses. Imagine Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me, Baby”—but rendered as a desperate plea—and you have the sing-songy-yet-sombre “The Night Starts Here.” The album gets truly desperate when Campbell drops the band and, accompanied only by saccharine piano, belts out his best Jean Valjean on the abominably bad ballad, “Barricade.” (Andrew Lloyd Webber, eat your heart out: “I’ll be on the barricade/Where the love died, but the hate can’t fade.”) True, 2004’s Set Yourself on Fire didn’t lack for theatrics. But on that album, Stars rather responsibly paired searching lyrics with just the right guitar flourishes: glorious drone on “Ageless Beauty”; an unexpected, Radiohead crunch on “One More Night”; and the Pumpkins-esque “Sleep Tonight.” The single fetching rock track on the latest album is “Window Bird”: Carefully plucked notes pair perfectly with Millan’s fragile, feather-light vocals, before growing into a stormy conclusion marked by crash symbols and an electric solo. That’s the Stars drama that fans go in for: Full and unabashed, but also quite innovative. On In Our Bedroom, Stars seem to be going through the motions, and the results are, well, a little embarrassing.

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