Albert Hammond, Jr.
Yours to Keep
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Albert Hammond, Jr.
Yours to Keep
Scratchie, 2007
RiYL: James Iha, Brian Wilson, Guided by Voices |
One of Hammond's real strengths on his first release as vocalist and principal songwriter is, paradoxically, his lack of concern about being compared to Strokes mastermind Julian Casablancas. A lot of the best songs on Yours to Keep sound like Strokes tunes, and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, material like "In Transit" and "101" is in fact reworked from music Hammond wrote for a Strokes DVD release when Casablancas proved otherwise engaged. The fact that the guitarist doesn't seek to bury his roots on his first solo record makes the departures on Yours to Keep from The Strokes formula sound natural and welcome.
While the tunes named above and further agreeable gentle rockers like "Holiday" and "Everyone Gets a Star" will surprise no fans of Is This It and Room on Fire, Hammond isn't nearly the slavish disciple to pattern that his boss Casablancas is. Yours to Keep is at its best when Hammond feels at liberty to explore his other influences, like the cheerful whistling section in "Call an Ambulance" or the brass-band blowout that closes "Hard to Live in the City." "Bright Young Thing" is an acutely arranged ballad that recalls early Death Cab for Cutie. "Cartoon Music for Superheroes," perhaps too preciously, mixes in a toy piano with its simple guitar arpeggios and drumrolls.
While Hammond clearly evidences enough melodic sensibility on Yours to Keep to earn him an expanded compositional role in The Strokes, that's not to say that the album doesn't often leave one longing for the presence of his bandmates. The rather yeomanlike work of Josh Lattanzi and Matt Romano on bass and drums leaves one longing for the vastly more dynamic Nikolai Fraiture and Fab Moretti. The few guitar solos Hammond takes himself on Yours to Keep don't hold a candle to Nick Valensi's work. Most of all, Hammond is cursed with a sideman's singing voice, and he's neither an aggressive enough arranger nor a sharp enough lyricist to keep most of Yours to Keep's tracks from coming over mostly as pleasant but unmemorable diversions. Despite the writer's block evidenced so clearly on First Impressions of Earth, it's hard for the mind not to turn to thoughts of what Casablancas could do with some of these melodies.
On the whole, Yours to Keep is excellent proof by negative example of the fact that what The Strokes do is harder than it looks. A critic once wrote that the Buzzcocks made "simple music played ferociously well," and while Casablancas has never felt the need to move much beyond common time signatures and chugging three-chord guitar patterns, his band has the chops to push them over. Yours to Keep traffics in simple music, but it's at best played competently, and it surely lacks the spark of true greatness. Hammond is advised to continue playing with his prep school buddy Casablancas, assuming the latter can see his way clear to affording Albert more than one co-songwriting credit on the next three Strokes records.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.