Album Review: The Autumn Defense- Fifth
Why am I sad? The city
lights are beautiful without her…
“Why am I sad” is
probably one of my favorite opening lines to a song of all time—it’s the very
first thing you hear the moment Circles begins,
the 2003 effort from what is commonly known as the “Wilco-side project” The
Autumn Defense.
I bout that record, Circles,
somewhat impulsively, based on that very lyric and moment alone, in August of
2005, from the now defunct Borders Books in Dubuque, IA. I was 22, had
graduated from college like three months before that, and had just moved out of
my mother’s house. Living on my own was an incredibly exciting feeling, because
I was young then, and had no idea what adulthood had in store for me.
I had some spending money to tide me over until I got my
first pay check from the job I had taken, it was probably meant for, like,
living expenses and food and whatnot, and I think as my mom drove away from my
apartment building, she was like, “Don’t buy a bunch of CDs or something with
your money.”
So what did I do after I finished unpacking the VERY FIRST
NIGHT I was on my own?
I went driving around Dubuque, feeling incredibly #blessed
for this new life I was living, and I ended up at the Kennedy Mall—a place I
would end up many, many other times in my 9 months living on my own.
I don’t think I had intended to splurge and purchase Circles. I was just browsing through the
CDs, and I saw it in the “As.” I picked I up an scanned the barcode to sample
some of the tracks on the little listening station thing, and that’s when
“Silence” started up—Why am I sad…
In 2007, The Autumn Defense—a duo comprised of Wilco members
Pat Sansone and John Stirratt—released a self-titled LP that I slept on. Maybe
it was just the wrong time for me to care about 1960s and 70s-esq AM radio
alt-country/pop. I did care by the tail end of 2010, and their 4th
album, Once Around. Or at least I
cared about the lead single off of it, “Back of My Mind,” because it was catchy
and listener friendly, and I seem to remember it getting a lot of airtime on
the radio show I used to do from 2010 to the end of 2012.
So that brings us to now. And I’ve said a lot about myself,
a little about The Autumn Dense, and absolutely nothing about their 5th
LP, aptly titled Fifth.
(sometimes, this is how i say "fifth.")
Consequence of Sound gave Fifth a pretty shitty review—a “C-“ on their new grading scale for
records, writing it off as tame soft rock, and kind of pointing a critical
finger and laughing at the idea that the album opens with a track called “None
of This Will Matter.”
Fifth is, as
expected, a pleasant listen, and The Autumn Defense has never claimed to be
anything more than what this record shows. Sansone’s and Stirratt’s musical
partnership is tight; as it should be. They’ve been performing as this duo for
well over a decade. Stirratt has been in Wilco since day one, and Sansone has
been a part of their six-person line up since A Ghost is Born.
The band has always had a knack for writing very sun-soaked
sounding pop music that boasts incredibly crisp and warm production values. The
songs that make up Fifth are no
exception. While easy to write it off as “soft rock,” it’s very well made soft
rock. It’s the kind of record that sounds like it would be more at home coming
from an LP, spinning on a turntable, rather than on a CD, or a bunch of files
played from a computer.
While mostly solid all the way through, Fifth stacks its best songs within the first half: both “This Thing
That I’ve Found” and “I Can See Your Face” happen very early on, and are both
prime examples of the catchy kind of jams the duo are capable of producing when
everything falls into place. “Calling Your Name” is also a stand out, mostly
because of the undeniable groove created, and the way that Stirratt and Sansone
pay homage to a 1970s sound without being derivative.
I had originally started to say that Fifth loses some energy after the halfway point, but that would be
incorrect, because there’s plenty of energy on “Why Don’t We” and “Things On My
Mind.” I would say, however, the record loses a bit of focus in the second
half—the slower or more mid-tempo tracks are saved for later on, and the duo
attempt to expand out beyond the 70s vibe from early on, but the results are a
little mixed.
The Autumn Defense is a band that you could say I have a
passing interest in. Like, when I read they had a new album, I thought, “Oh I
should take a listen to that and write a review of it.” But like, in general,
they aren’t a band I seriously fuck with much anymore. Somehow, over the course
of the last nine years (yikes) Circles
has maintained its status in the “As” of our “A Squad” compact disc collection,
and has not yet been demoted to “B Squad” (the CDs/movies/books we don’t use as
much and live in the basement.) Fifth
is more than likely a record I won’t be returning to much throughout 2014, but
it is certainly not a bad album. It has its strengths and it certainly has its
share of weaknesses. While the duo’s day job in Wilco is comprised mostly of
shitting out bland “dad rock,” I would say that the warm sounds of Fifth are more intelligent than that.
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