A.C. Newman
"Get Guilty" CD
Matador
Records
Genre: indie pop, prog-rock,
singer / songwriter
Brooklyn NY
Feb 23, 2009 |
It seems so obvious now, in hindsight, that A.C. Newman was
eventually going to make a full-out prog album. And here it is! It's
not your bald uncle's prog, though. Where many prog-rockers are
sarcastic and dismissive, on Get Guilty, Newman's legendary
reverence for the pop tradition is as evident as ever. Where many prog-rockers
are insular assholes with an annoyingly inchoate sense of humour,
Newman is insular too, but his introspection is sweet and thoughtful,
just as it was on his first solo album, The Slow Wonder.
Newman's arrangements are arrestingly elegant, as always. This
album finds him veering toward discrete song structures. Not that
Newman has ever been a groove guy, but Get Guilty's songs
progress like classical compositions more than anything he's done
before. There are bells, strings, crescendos, call-and-response bits
with the drums, instrumental monster codas. There are also lots of
disorienting, offbeat tunes in the same vein as Slow Wonder's
slower highlights. Newman has traditionally made pop songs with lots
of flourishes; these are series of flourishes with lots of pop song
lurking underneath them, if you focus. But it's still an A.C. Newman
album. The hooks don't care whether you're paying attention. They will
hit you either way.
As usual, Newman's lyrics are cryptic, but they're more forthright
than usual this time. "The Collected Works" is
probably about guilty, if not
getting guilty (in case you were wondering, since the album did drop
on the day guilty's successor took office). On a number of tracks he
seems to be grappling with his reputation for being a craftsman, not a
songwriter: "Amid moving boxes stacked, I'm still waiting for the
right words, make of that what you will," and "It is the devil you
know that will slam the door harder." Or "Stop twisting your words,
words into shapes, shapes you can only make out when you squint," and
"Forget yourself, he's somewhere else, you have the luxury of B-sides"
(on a track that builds up to a nonsense la-la-la chorus about his
submarine pulling into Stockholm). Or, maybe most tellingly, on the
title track, "I will die with my foot in my mouth." Maybe he's found
his great subject. I'm sure there are tons of people out there who
identify with a guy struggling against being self-conscious about his
self-consciousness. I sure can.
For the sake of argument, best chorus: "Like a Hitman, Like a
Dancer." Most resonant: "The Changeling (Get Guilty)." Best song: "The
Heartbreak Rides." Probability you'll agree with all three of those:
0. Final verdict: awesome.
a.c.
newman's myspace
89%
Rhett Alexander
[Vitals: 12 tracks, distributed by
the
label,
released Jan 20, 2009] |
