Libraries
The Love Language
Score:71
Reviewer: Ed Butler
Label: Merge (USA)
Reviewed: Aug 31st '10, Released:2010
The Love Language’s self-titled debut from last year was a lo-fi effort in stateside misery; an Americana spin on what has been an Anglophone niche for decades. While almost every beat on The Love Language could be linked to The Kinks’ more downbeat efforts, there was always the unmistakeable timbre and tone of the American folk tradition. The follow up, Libraries, finds Stuart Lamb in more upbeat, but downcast, form. It also finds him, one minute into the opener, ‘Pedals’, referencing Arcade Fire just a little bit too much, down to the mixing and recording of the piano and strings, with their unmistakeable echoes of ‘Neighbourhood #1’
McLamb’s desire to ride the bombastic slipstream doesn’t last long, however, as his rich, joyous voice finds itself at odds with music that, while never straying into the mordant, regularly finds itself in mournful, Bacharach-style barroom crooning, such as the ¾ cabaret-gloom of album highlight ‘This Blood is Our Own’. As on this song, McLamb’s North Carolinian voice finds itself in a near-perfect niche in the instrumentation, occasionally neatly vanishing into the mix. While this is no great help in understanding his intent, the effect is one of immersion in McLamb’s greater ethos of the pains, joys and heartaches of everyday living.
Of course, it takes a special talent to grind the listener down with weighty themes of daily ennui without turning them off, and McLamb’s no Win Butler. Thankfully, he seems aware of this, which results in the occasional burst of Byrds-ian guitar pop like ‘Heart to Tell’, a bouncy reprieve from feelings of heartely earnestness cloaked in pretty sounds.
But that song is an ideal microcosm of Libraries. While McLamb’s voice occasionally grates when misused, and the prettiness can get mundane, when he rips out the all-too-brief guitar solo, it summons up the spectrum of emotion each of us can relate to in music that never pretends to a level of profoundness that it can’t reach. And in those moments, Libraries is truly transcendent.
