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Do you remember the first time you heard Bright Eyes? I bet you do. You see, in this decade where technology and immediacy have defragmented our attention spans, and subsequently our music, very few things can sound as shocking as Conor Oberst’s voice. It was a total mockery of what we (as an indie audience) thought a voice should be.
Sure, Dylan’s nose was runny, and Neil Young was always coming down. Hell, what could be more shocking than Tom Waits’ phlegm? But what started with the aching whispers of Elliott Smith, and was then intensified to an all-out emotional breakdown by Oberst in the late 90s, was a new line in the sand. A love me or hate me approach to delivery that may have spawned an entire generation of — dare I say it — "Emo" singers.
Dandelion Snow, essentially just singer/songwriter Roger Harvey, whose band and label are based right here in Bushwick, has to deal with Oberst’s legacy every time he steps on the stage. He even cringed alittle when I brought it up. But that’s how singular an artist Oberst is, and so the question becomes whether Dandelion Snow can hold his own when it comes to the words, not how they’re being delivered.
As the band name implies, Roger likes to deal with the idea of innocence. And on his newest LP It’s Just A Bad Dream he approaches the struggle for independence, love, and most of all, happiness with the same bleak optimism as another one of his heroes, Bruce Springsteen. His characters, usually first person, are travelers. Rolling down the windows, watching the fireworks from the hood of a car. But as we all know, those moments are fleeting.
On the Dylan-referencing "Tom Thumb’s Travels (Going Out To Portland)," Roger details a road trip from NYC to Portland with a girl who "spent her life at the bottom of the stairs," and doesn’t seem to be getting any better. She’s in denial about whatever is wrong, and rather than deal with her, he wakes up some mornings "On this side of skippin’ town/ Most nights I just black out/ Instead of calming myself down." These are kids learning to grow up, stepping out on their own for the first time, and finding that things are fucked up everywhere. The "long, black corridor" they’re all going down is essentially the open highway that Springsteen romanced about in the mid-70s. Anyone who’s followed his career knows that road doesn’t lead anywhere.
As a counterbalance, some tracks look more positively on good times which have passed. The opening track, "Fireworks Display" is pushed along by colorful synths and back-up vocals from Morgan Erina, with whom he did a split LP in 2008. Again, on "Belly of the Beast," which blips and bumps like a Postal Service song, Roger nails that strange balance between reminiscing and regretting with "We wore grass stained Jeans/ When we saw things clearer/ All our days were smoke/ All our nights were mirrors." Things were good, at least, for a little while.
Like Oberst, what Dandelion Snow takes away from you with the first impression of his voice is instantly returned by the power of his lyrics. And the best way for him to separate himself from that shadow is to remain focused on his own creations, and sing with his own voice. Which I believe he does. This is, after all, his third release of the year.
One of the last things I spoke about with Roger was how "uncool" folk music has become. The more I listen to him, the more I hear him as part of a long standing American tradition, the "old, weird America" that was uninhibited by social conventions like college and baby showers. That’s something hard to understand in a city that buries all its treasures the minute they become obsolete. Roger says it best on the gospel-tinged "You, In That Hospital Gown," you have to "follow the river to it’s source."
Dandelion Snow, “The Belly Of The Beast”
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adam November 24th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
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