Quieting Syrup
(Lovitt)
First, a quick word about band names. Has the well just run dry on interesting things to call your band? The debut from Denali, Ambulette and Pinebender member Stephen Howard is a harrowing journey through illnesses, surgeries, and, inevitably, addiction -- but the solo project is afflicted with a moniker that, though an accurate reflection of the subject matter, virtually says "Stop: Go Back. Nothing to Hear Here."
But there is. Beginning with the opening processional, "Passwords to a Fort Full of Pills," Howard chronicles in a dozen songs - usually at a narcotic-friendly pace - the cycle of injury/recovery/addiction that characterized his last dozen years (Howard says he wrote one song per year). On the aptly titled "Winter of Our Discontent," whose ringing guitars and rolling percussion sounds like a blend of East River Pipe and Pedro the Lion, Howard sings what must've amounted to a mission statement for much this era: "Drove my car right into the lake/to show that there are faster ways/to sink to the bottom/but I'd rather take my time." His hospital visits are evocatively adapted in tracks like "Night Nurse Calls" and "So This Is Dying," and elsewhere we hear Howard negotiating with his habits, as on "Goin' for the Gold" when he sings "Not giving in, just getting high, that's the way some of us get by." But that song is emblematic of the self-indulgence that anchors any addict's behavior, as its eventual crescendo doesn't quite merit the nearly nine minutes it takes to get there.
And with a limited sonic palette - guitar, bass and drums are only occasionally augmented by keys, Wurlitzer or lap steel - and little variance in the tempos, the songs, though individually strong, tend to haze together as the record plays out. But ultimately the real issue is that over the course of a dozen odes to the fucked-up life, and the loneliness and depression at its core, sympathy for Howard's legitimate plight is tempered by a general fatigue at what is, in the end, one of the oldest stories ever told.
Standout Tracks: "Stars Will Save Me" "Dec. 7th, 2003" JOHN SCHACHT
