ChrissieAlbum Review: Annuals - Be He Me
July 4th 2008 11:24
Word is just in. The melancholic paean is dead and The Annuals are dancing on its rotting carcass.
Nostalgia is a curious thing. For some people, it’s an evocative jaunt down memory lane, for others, it’s the cemetery of their past laid bare. I know both of these to be true. There is a bittersweet longing which takes refuge in all of us, and although it’s pushed to our darkest depths, every now and then we can’t help but quietly contemplate what once was, what could’ve been, perhaps, what should’ve been. Sometimes, it’s easier to deal with heartbreak in this way and, as always, heartbreak gives good song.
Be He Me sees Adam Baker – Annuals’ vocalist and chief songwriter – purge his past through song. These plaintive tales of love and loss, and all that complicated stuff that falls in between, are firmly entrenched in the telling of yesterday. This might be a tender and vulnerable narrative but there’s a buoyancy in the music that eschews austerity in favour of animated sounds.
The Annuals don’t meekly introduce themselves to their listener. They begin an aural onslaught of songs within songs that require endless listens to identify that strange bleep or those wonderful harmonies that were missed the last time round. There’s no room for stillness here: every space is filled with jaunty melodies, resonant guitars and a plethora of electronic effects.
This excursion into the past begins with Brother. The somnolent drone of cicadas gives way to a sweet and dreamy intro which subsequently segues into a rollicking, effects laden melange that is, once again, bookended by cicadas. It’s astonishing to believe that Baker was only 17 when he wrote some of these songs, but then again, it’s quite telling when Baker lionises death in his lyrics and seems unduly fixated with the idea of his own expiration. From the ‘bleary eyed baby girl dying on my bathroom floor’ in Bleary Eyed to his affirmation in Fair, ‘I’m quite sure that I could die’, it appears that someone is always dying in these songs. Or thinking about dying. When they’re not dying – or contemplating their demise – then they’re attempting to raise the dead.
‘I only feel like living when I feel like I’m dying’, he warbles on Dry Clothes. The ethereal harmonies are tempered by jarring vocals, as Baker’s repetition of the chorus ‘dry clothes, dry clothes’, morphs from lilting refrain to an impassioned plea as he recounts his fear of a neighbourhood dog as a child.
The piano driven ballad, Father is a beautifully restrained tribute to Baker’s father – who took his own life after an ongoing battle with cancer. His chiaroscuro reflections are aptly echoed in the music. The melody, which is steeped in a dreamlike reverie, ambles around Baker’s breathy vocals which are underpinned by a strident wail.
There are some delightful surprises such as the thoroughly enchanting Ida My, whose seemingly serene opening sequence consists solely of candied vocals and an acoustic guitar. It’s a mellifluous evensong but Baker swiftly abandons his susurration halfway through, in favour of his customary wail. The song then asserts itself at a cantering pace, with a miscellany of electronic flourishes.
The delicate vocals – which at times bring to mind Jeff Buckley – and the smooth programming on Chase You Off sit incongruously amongst Baker’s awkward lyrics. ‘You crazy old bitch’, he croons, and it sounds so timid you know he hardly means it. Bleary Eyed and Fair are perfectly saccharine pop songs which show just enough restraint to prevent them from becoming too cloying. The fact that Baker wails like a virago seems to help.
Despite the panoply of effects which adorn these songs, the album’s imprint is fleeting. These songs fail to embed themselves into my consciousness. They’re ambitious constructions that are grand in scale and given every imaginable treatment but when the music stops, there is nothing. At times the Annuals come across as slack jawed shysters – perhaps they too are surprised at the currency of their own music – and the songs sound like they’re held together by a tenuous strip of sticky tape. They’ve thrown as many effects, and random whoops and howls, as they possibly could into each song, and as a result the album sounds like it’s one whoop away from implosion.
Yet, despite all this, there’s a naivety contained within these songs that is endearing. He’s too young to know better, yet old enough to have seen it all. He echoes all our stories, there’s a little bit of ourselves in his words and they ring true.
Maybe that’s the appeal of these songs. ‘I’ve hunted down my past, held it close to the earth. I made it last’, he sings on the elegiac Mama and although this is Baker’s story, somewhere in there he’s also singing my song. If only he can make it last.
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