Stay Positive comes on like a great structure of brick and mortar. Really solid, really strong, really consistent, but upon closer inspection, full of nuance and structural complexity. A few of these it would be hard to miss on the first pass, but when you pay the album time, I think the respect grows: eventually you really take note of their knack for composition and clever observational lyrics. Craig Finn's vocals come in like a jet fighter swooping in for a landing. He's bombastic, very Springsteenian, which is either a compliment or an insult depending on your taste. Mainly he talk-sings sermons or anecdotes, sometimes at length often fighting against the melody, giving several the songs a rough-hewn sermon-like edge to them. It's combative, very much in the vein of Springsteen or Elvis Costello or Mark Knopfler... not punk per se, but definitely carrying weight and attitude. More cultural criticism than sound and fury.
The bricks and mortar here are a bunch of solid rocking tracks throughout the album. "Constructive Summer" ignites the blaze in a fury of motivation and inspiration: "Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer... / We are are only saviours... / We're gonna build something this summer." The celebration of music-loving crops up throughout the album, like the Led Zeppelin shout-outs in "Joke About Jamaica," which is choked up and tense, and then staggered and weary as it rolls the album toward its close with a brief but blazing wah-wah solo. Earlier, "Navy Sheets" is full of bluster and platinum-bright fuzz guitars. "Yeah Sapphire" is one of many great instances of blended guitars and pianos throughout the album, and the title track froths with the Elvis Costello-like immediacy, helped along with organs and "woah-hos" that recur later. This is rock you can really sink your teeth into. "Magazines," one of various great character studies on here, has an excellent hook in "Magazines and daddy issues / I know you're pretty pissed, I hope you still let me kiss you."
All this is good, and a whole album pitched at this level would be perfectly fine, but as I said there is nuance between the bricks, moments of real architectural greatness. You could quibble with the listening pleasure found in "One For The Cutters" -- the harpsichord is contentious, but the song's mission isn't to be a pop classic, it's to create a nice, eerie, murder mystery vibe, a delicate web of intrigue spun by the testimonial vocals. "Both Crosses" might not win everyone over with its mystical southwestern sound, but provides a context on its own, Finn mumbles, "I been thinking 'bout both crosses..." and the worlds swirl around with those flamenco-like guitars. You feel the hot sun and wonder whether it's Albuquerque or Nazareth. "Baby let's transverberate." Got to love the rhythm section, all through the album, but here they do some really special stuff.
A whole album at this level would be a perfectly good disc, but an album is lucky to have three peaks as high as Stay Positive's. "Sequestered in Memphis" I'd say, is objectively the strongest effort here, marrying Finn's talent for storytelling lyrics and delivery with a rollicking riff and hook. It's the track most obviously meant for radio, but not sounding like other radio hits, with some really graceful horns helping splashing around in the background. It's the best showcase for his hoarse, wearied and skeptical but game-for-anything vocal. "Lord, I'm Discouraged" might be my personal favourite, proving the band can master the ballad as much as the rocker. Ballads are an easy place for a band to get lazy, but a good one is killer. It reminded me of the gut-wrenching "I'm Not The Sun" from the Arkells' Jackson Square album, which I looked at way early in the blog. It begins with shimmering, shuffling of feet and navel-gazing vocals as it attempts to delve into the story of one of those inscrutable females you never can seem to reach. It will ring absolutely true to anyone like me who has known such a character, had her pass through your life and watched sadly as she took a toll on herself. The chorus is deepened with gorgeous harmonies and it's pitched at just the right rhythm: "Excuses and fortified wine... there's a house on the South Side she stays in at days at a time" or even better, "The sutures and bruises are none of my business / She says that she's sick but she won't get specific... this guy from the North Side comes down to visit / His visits they only take five or six minutes," my heart grows cold just hearing it, and it launches into one of those pitch-perfect solos that caps the sentiment excellently, wordlessly. That last chorus does it to me every time. In fact, the sequencing makes it a little harder to appreciate the rollicking intro riff to "Yeah Sapphire." The towering last track, another fave "Slapped Actress," involves some great oblique lyrics, and one of the best summations I've heard on this piece of plastic, "Sometimes actresses get slapped / Sometimes fake fights turn out bad." Finn's lyrics often observe how things get out of control, how far away from understanding many of us are, and he does it deftly. Through this distance, through music, however, we are united.
If you can, pick up the version with three bonus tracks, "Ask Her for Adderall," "Cheyenne Sunrise" and "Two-Handed Handshake." The first of those is an excellent basic punk workout that was probably only left out because it feels less fleshed-out than the proper album tracks. "Two-Handed Handshake" describes a lot of people you probably know, maybe you yourself, and leaves the album with a few words of encouragement and an awesome horn-based hook. Lovely.
This album might not work for everyone (nothing good probably would.) It has that earthy, everyman feel that, as I mentioned, will appeal to fans of Springsteen and Costello. It's rebellious without being angry or showy, catchy without being poppy, and takes risks with its instrumentation. Finn's voice is hardly radio tested standard, but that's the charm, and I consider it my duty to look at what an album wants to be and see if it is that, as much as if it works for me. I do love it, incidentally, but even if I didn't, I'd respect it. In any case, it's important to stay positive: and, in the face of a work like this, not that hard.
Buy this album now: // Amazon.com
// Amazon.ca
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