Get Guilty

Today's Music of the Day is A.C. Newman's Get Guilty. No history lesson here, just that I found out about this album a few months ago via the New Pornographers' mailing list and have been eagerly anticipating it ever since.

I want to start by not comparing this album to The Slow Wonder, Newman's previous solo effort, which was excellent. I really do. But I just can't do it! Slow Wonder and Get Guilty have a similar sound, but Slow Wonder was definitely more bare-bones and intimate. I don't know that Get Guilty has any tearjerkers like "Come Crash" (though "Elemental" comes pretty close). The big thing that I notice is that Get Guilty is so complicated and busy - there's just so much happening, even from the beginning - that there is a lot to digest, even with Newman's wonderful melodies and lyrics still running the show. (It does settle down a little towards the end of the album, only to pick up again with the closer.)

However, this isn't such a bad thing. Get Guilty has some wonderful songs - there really aren't ballads here, but neither do the songs have that trademark New Pornographers energy. Everything seems to fall in a fairly consistent range of tempo, just marching on, down into the depths of my brain until I can't remember what it was like without ever not having it there to begin with. This is the kind of album that is easy to listen to and like, in spite of how much it occupies the aural palate; when it ends, the silence resonates just as hard as any song.

I do like to think that an album is only as good as the last song, as pretenders stack the first half with singles and hide the crap towards the end, but a solid album has a lot of great moments and leaves on a soaring high or a moment that makes you wish it wouldn't end so abruptly. Get Guilty has the second kind of ending, a steady groove by the name of "All of My Days and All of My Days Off". This song has just enough going on, and a chorus that feels like driving home from the best vacation of your life: looking back, savoring the memories, wondering how everything came together so well and why it had to end so soon, even though you knew there was no other way.

I don't think there's a bad song on the album; I do have my favorites, but this is the kind of album that rewards those listeners who still appreciate the concept of an album. It starts well, ends well, and has a lot of wonderful moments in between; this is probably my favorite album in the past six months if not more. Will you enjoy it? Maybe. I hope so.

In Other News:
I wrote this while eating lunch and then there were like 4 straight hours of chaos.

I also listened to Neutral Milk Hotel this morning and it made me happy.