The miles of love that won’t ever win

(Broken Social Scene Presents) Kevin Drew: Spirit If…

As the fulcrum of the large, messy, and unpredictable Broken Social Scene and the Arts & Crafts label, Kevin Drew has a lot of talented friends to assist him in his debut album. This means that Spirit If… has contributions by people from indie legends Spiral Stairs and J Mascis to fellow Torontonians and every damn person on A&C, such as Feist, Jason Collett, Amy Millan, Emily Haines, everyone in Do Make Say Think, even Gonzales and Tom Cochrane, among many others. This is in its own modest way an all-star project (Broken Social Scene PRESENTS).

Well, if you have a working familiarity with the A&C crew, then you might have some idea of the objects in play. It has the uncomfortably open sexuality of Stars, the epigrammatic cryptic nature of Broken Social Scene, the sunny playfulness of The Most Serene Republic, and the jumbled folk/rock ensemble sound of all of them. However, rather than being unwieldy and ramshackle (especially considering the assembled nature of this set, taken from two years of recordings), it is remarkably well-honed and satisfying. Sure, it’s messy, but for work from this collective, it sounds downright polished.

The first track, “Farewell to the Pressure Kids” (although said ‘Pressure Kids’ return later in the album) is an assault on the senses, synthesizers and vibraphone battling for earspace with raucous guitar, drums, and bass, then breaking just as suddenly for an ambient interlude before a slow, perfected rebuilding with violin and clarinet. It is the beating back of the chaos, and Spirit If… proceeds from this point with lush and considered instrumentation. “TBTF” lays down acoustic guitar, vibraphone, and synthesizer and over the course of three minutes layers in trombone, flute, and saxophone in rising harmony.

Much of the melody of the album is built up in accents, the songs starting out with a primary heartbeat of rhythm and progress by adding rhyming patterns of notes. Guitars and organs chime and bounce showers of notes off each other, everything is built on interplay and cooperation, the sculpture of many talents bridged together. However, the highest point of the album is much more explosive, “Lucky Ones” with an embittered message of anger and hope that cannot resolve itself. While nothing else ever quite reaches the same level of serendipity, the overall effect of the album is strong, an unexpectedly well-composed collective of sound with only minor and endearing disarray.

81% => **** —currently #14 on my best of 2007 list—

~ by jshopa on June 11, 2008.