A.M. Sixty
Big As The Sky
»
A.M. Sixty
Big As The Sky
V2, 2004
RiYL: The Beach Boys, “When I’m 64,” Blondie |
The album was called Big As The Sky, and its cover was nauseatingly designed with a sky theme, baby handwriting, and an image of the top of a wide-eyed, spiky-haired face. Charming! The songs, named things like “Just A Dream” and “Tonite’s The Nite,” evoked the track list from the musical debut of a teen starlet. Then the enhanced CD “bonus” track took over his laptop screen: a thematically consistent blue-sky Flash application that immediately consumed all of the computer’s resources and a required a swift Quit. This wasn’t charming, it was cheesy. Was it ironically cheesy? Not hardly – the quality of the entire product was too low, too honestly unsuccessful, to comprise a stab at a parody of a low quality product.
The first notes sounded, and this reviewer’s hand reached for the stop button, convinced that his assessment of a book by its cover had been a perceptive one. This was the bossa nova beat from the first Casio keyboard of his childhood, if maybe a bit faster than the Casio ever spat out. (You can hear the Casio now in the back corridors of your brain – the shuffling bass, the low fidelity, the beeping chords.) The rest of that song, “Summertime Girlfriend,” did get a bit better once this reviewer gave it a chance, though, turning into soft surf rock that would make a suitable soundtrack for a summer Saturday. And then a great line: “I’d dedicate my life to her tan lines.” Maybe this wasn’t so stupid after all.
The next song drove home that old wisdom about books and covers and judging, and it was time to put this bout of superiority and smugness to rest. It turns out that Big As The Sky is an acceptably listenable album, and “Just A Dream,” its second track, is its best track. It has a completely different sound from the first song and most of the album, though it keeps its bleached-blonde attitude. The song starts with a classic Motown soul riff, slowed down and softened up, and maintains the momentum after a terrific beginning to become a great and swingingly laid-back pop song.
There are more than a few other high-grade songs hiding in the low-grade packaging. “Your Stuff, My House” is a moody and atmospheric break-up ballad. That surf-rock thing again makes the track a little silly, but it manages to escort in the appropriate mood.
The last track, “Watching The Sun Go Down” is two songs in one. The first half is an emotional Pink-Floyd-meets-the-Moody-Blues acoustic instrumental that meets a literally moist and watery end. Next, unnecessary cleverness returns with a long, silent break that might have fooled someone in the cassette-tape era but does nothing to make secret songs more secret in this age of track timings. The track then lapses into an unrelated beginner-level funk spectacular whose chorus is the poetic and poignant call of “Treble, bass, and midrange / Alcohol, love, and pain.” Big As The Sky fades into the sunset with a scat that sounds both like the noises my mom makes when she describes hop-hop and someone talking through a kazoo, though somehow it’s still a good repeat listen.
There are also some dreadful snoozers on this album. That hateful bossa nova sound comes back at least twice more, and there are several other faceless throwaways. “Big As The Sky,” for example, starts off slow and monotonous and stays there for an interminable 3:38. “We Belong Together” tries to be lounge folk music and manages only to be sleep-inducing. “Bus” starts with the same boring beat, but recovers and has a nice turn to a minor chord and slightly more robust instrumentation on the chorus. It’s also got the most chilled-out shouted phrase you’ve ever heard.
All throughout the album, even on its best tracks, writer, producer, singer, and player-of-most-of-the-instruments Chris Root’s voice is meek. It’s so consistently meek, in fact, it might be reasonable to question whether or not Root has ever been able to let go with a traditional rock ‘n’ roll howl or even a forceful grunt. Big As The Sky’s best melodies, though, stand on their own even without any howling or grunting. Luckily, it’s an album that’s better listened to than looked at.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.