Robert Scott
(Flying Nun)
The beef on Robert Scott - and indeed on his long-running band, the Bats - is that the sound never changes. Even if you enjoy the propulsive jangle of "North by North" or "Block of WooD," the canard goes, there's no reason to pick up the new one. It'll just be more of the same exquisitely droning, carefully modulated guitar pop. This argument has always seemed like ADD-addled analysis to me. If you listen carefully, it's easy enough to pick out subtle changes in the sound, and anyway, people who value gimmicks over quality deserve what they get.
But in any case, Ends Run Together, Scott's third solo album, is a surprisingly varied document, putting college rock jangle, next to wistful folk rock, next to driving guitar psychedelia, next to open-ended instrumental experiments. It's also quite good, end to end, emotionally resonant without being weepy, well-constructed without sacrificing a certain slapdash charm.
Scott's band is comfortable in all these sounds, perhaps because they're comfortable together. He's brought in long-time Flying Nun string player Alan Starrett, as well as the rhythm section from Dunedin's Onanon, Don Ferns and Ants Anema. Two singers from Haunted Love, another New Zealand stalwart, add soft harmonies and counterparts. That's Geva Downey and Rainy McMaster. David Kilgour - Scott's been a member of the Clean since the late 1970s - adds his distinctive, psychedelic guitars-splintering-into-rainbows effect to "Too Early." Although Anema does most of the drumming, Lesley Paris of Look Blue, Go Purple, sits in on a couple of the tracks. And Scott himself plays a whole pawn shop's worth of instruments - guitar, bass, keyboards and even xylophone. The effect is comfortable, low-key and effortless, even as the musicians explore widely varying kinds of sounds.
You might find yourself gravitating first to the most propulsive rockers. "Daylight," the single, shimmers with a Neu!-ish hyper-reality, its kraut-repetitive group glittering with psychedelic overtones, but moving relentlessly forward all the same. Opener "On the Lake" is classic early 1990s Bats jangle, though shot through with a ruminative melancholy. "Nowhere to go back to/and it ends too soon," keens Scott in his shadowy tenor, a wistful observation on impermanence and the passage of time. "Too Early," one of the disc's best tracks, pummels with drums, screams with distorted guitars, yet remains dreamily untethered, its layered and interleaved sounds shimmering like a slick of oil on a puddle.
A good half the album, though, comprises slower, sparer songs, which highlight the folky, pensive side of Scott's songwriting. "Carmilla" is a whisper turned translucently melodic, its verses hesitant and framed by picked guitar. "Days Run Together," finds mystery and mantra in the everyday, its chorus "Days run together/is there an end in sight?/ends run together/and they create the light" pierced with eerie dulcimer tones.
You get the sense of Scott paring back, of gradually subtracting elements until he comes to the pith of what he intends. The last two songs go so far as to mostly eliminate vocals, "Tuscan Nights" sticking to piano and electronic keyboards, "Terminus" slipping even further into Max Richter-ish lyricism, with just a mutter of poetry over its piano and electronics to link it to any kind of pop tradition. They're both lovely in unexpected ways -- and should for once and all put to rest the idea that Robert Scott has only one thing to say.
DOWNLOAD: "Days Run Together," "Too Early" JENNIFER KELLY
