version of Nick Drake�s work, with the soft (but versatile) guitar and world-weary vocals of singer Mark Janka. But this is songwriting very much of these times, and not just because there�s a song titled �You Snooze, You Lose.�
Chicago � the band�s point of origin � comes through in that unique sense that there�s always sometime/somewhere else on the mind. �Where the River Meets the Sea� feels like that point in an Illinois March when the cold and snow just won�t leave, and it seems like they never will. And, almost as a prerequisite for any good male band, they nail their �girl name song� with the twangy, small-town charmer �Josephine.� If only �Dawson�s Creek� still aired, the producers would finally have a halfway decent theme song for Josephine �Joey� Potter.
There are drifts into the unfortunate, however. A moratorium on songs about songs is ignored on �This is the Song I Wrote Last Night,� a tired ditty that only opens up the possibility of �I Had Roast Beef For Dinner� for a song title next album. Few bands can expect to walk that tightrope of slow emotional burn/languid depressor for an entire album�s journey.
But soft winds and supportive strings lift up the rest of the album to satisfying heights. The Lesser Birds play The House in DeKalb on Nov. 22, as perfect a match of venue as the band�s name to its style. |
