Look back over the list of reviews I've written recently, and you'll notice that I've been spending a lot of time on vaguely-indie, piano-rock types of bands. Mae, Copeland, Leeland, Lost Ocean... the list keeps expanding, and the bands can start to blur together and sound like one another after a while. It seems to be the sound du jour of 2007, at least in my CD collection, and I've developed a bit of a love/hate relationship with it, because at its worst it can be an overly emo imitation of Coldplay, but at its best, it can be a warm, beautiful, ambient sort of thing, or the piano can add a lot of joy to a good, upbeat rock track. Still, you'd probably think I didn't need yet another piano-rock act on my list after all the time I'd spent on the genre. But I'm not going to blame Arkansas-based band Deas Vail for showing up on my radar after I'd already checked out other bands that used a lot of the same ingredients. Quite honestly, there's nothing to fault them for, because Deas Vail blows them all out of the water.

Now that might sound like it's saying quite a bit for someone who gave those other artists (including Coldplay themselves) reviews ranging from passing to positively glowing. But a big part of my reasoning for that is because Deas Vail (pronounced "Day-ahs Vale", which is apparently Latin for "God's humble servant") surpasses them all in the creativity department. You won't find much in the way of slow crooning over steady but plodding piano here. You actually won't find much of anything plain at all. That's because this band comes armed with one of the most angelically androgynous lead singers you'll ever hear in Wes Blaylock (think Sigur Ros, but less nasal), intricate piano playing that rings loud and proud, ethereal guitar parts, and most crucially, some royally tricky rhythmic stuff from a highly talented drummer. These are songs that often have wonderfully memorable choruses, but navigate through unexpected shifts in time signature to get there, mostly without losing the momentum of the song. I wouldn't classify them as "prog" by any means, but Deas Vail has a wonderful knack for not telegraphing where a song's going to end up within the first few bars of its intro. There are some joyous climaxes where the heavens themselves appear to open up and rain down blessings upon the listener, but they often don't arrive at those by just taking the same chords and melody that we know from the rest of the song and just making everything ring out more intensely. This is sensitive-guy music, to be sure, but it's unpredictable sensitive-guy music.

If I had to try and describe the ingredients that make up Deas Vail's sound by way of other bands in the genre, I suppose I'd start with the swooning falsetto of Coldplay's Chris Martin, but only after forcing it to run at breakneck speed through a few obstacle courses provided by the tricky rhythmic shifts that Mae occasionally enjoys pulling off. Then I'd pick up a bit of literate psychological introspection from Copeland, as well as some of their sonic experimentation, and top it off with Lost Ocean's penchant for constructing wonderfully catchy choruses. That's a good way of taking a solid strength from each band (other than Coldplay and Mae, most of them are more likely peers than influences, anyway) and lumping them together, while leaving out some of those bands' weaknesses. It's important to note that Wes Blaylock's falsetto is really the only thing that I'd compare to Coldplay here - maybe a little bit of the synth ambience resembles their more recent stuff as well, but we're not dealing with a Coldplay clone by a long shot, and I'm starting to wish I could review piano-based bands without needing to bring up the world's favorite moody Brit-rockers each time. (I'll make a point of that next time our). I'd say that Blaylock even goes beyond Martin in his range, to the point where uninitiated listeners might ask, "Is that a girl?" Further confusing matters is the contribution of his wife, piano/keyboard player Laura Beth Hudson, on occasional backing vocals. It's hard to tell where he ends and she begins at times, but trust me, that's him singing all of the lead parts. And it's absolutely beautiful.

This band definitely has a knack for good lyrics, too. I'd say that each of their songs paints a vivid picture, while often managing to be rather cryptic that the same time. They generally don't fall into the trap of lyrical minimalism that I criticized Lost Ocean for, nor do they mistake plainspoken "What if you don't really love me?"-type diary entries for worthwhile introspection, either. Spiritual analogies bubble under the surface, though a lot of these songs appear to be relational, and it's to the band's credit that the fusing of these two subject never comes across as clich� to me. Many bands try to straddle the line between Christian and mainstream music by making the "spiritual" songs vague enough to work as love songs. Deas Vail doesn't appear to be making anything vague. They can be puzzling and difficult to understand at times, but that's due to an ability to poetically describe things, instead of just a lazy method of constructing sentences with vague pronouns. They're the kind of Christian band that makes you think, "Wow, that's quite a creative piece of work they've put together!", which in turn inspires you to listen more closely for whatever you missed the first time around, rather than just using familiar romantic language to "trick" you into hearing a particular message.

If there's one fault that Deas Vail's label debut, All the Houses Look the Same, appears to have, it's in the production. You can tell at times that the guitar riffs are mixed kind of low, or that some of the high-end (particularly the cymbals) has been clipped - the intricate wall of sound doesn't quite ring out from the stereo with the amount of force that it seems to want to. That's normally a major issue for me, but it's only really an annoyance on a few scattered tracks, and I think it was actually a conscious choice on the band's part to not go so big-budget with this one so that they wouldn't get stuck in the same trap as many other indie bands that have signed to a label, only to find that they couldn't recoup the costs of an overblown album that never really got the attention it deserved. Hey, it keeps the songs from being overwhelmed with string arrangements and other extraneous stuff that can't be reproduced live - Laura's synths provide enough ambiance when needed, so in that sense the band's got a do-it-yourself sort of intricate sound that puts them in good company with bands like Future of Forestry. The more I've listened, the less the production has been a problem for me, and once I realized that was the only thing I could really gripe about, I realized that I had no recourse but to give Deas Vail a rare five-star rating.

So here you have it - I'm staking an early claim on this year's Best New Artist. I seem to only hear a debut album this strong from a newly signed group once every two and a half years or so (the last one being Eisley's Room Noises in early '05), so I think I have just cause to gush like a fanboy over this one. With that said, let's get the up-close examinations of the song underway, so that I can make some attempt to actually back up my claim.

Standing...
I won't pretend that we are all friends
When all of us know that we're not...
The band curiously chooses to open their record by taking a song from a previously replaced EP and cutting it in half - the first few lines appear here, amidst slow, gentle piano playing, and it's just a fragment of a thought that gets expressed before twinkly synths pull us away and into the album's first full song. We'll hear the conclusion of this one at the end of the album.

Light as Air
You can't believe in everything you're told
Sometimes it's nobody that wins
But you fall down for your heart
And fight it out until the bitter end...
The full band officially gets things going with one of its poppiest songs, driven by two simple piano chords that ring out forcefully from Laura's keyboard, giving the song a jaunty, Belle & Sebastian sort of feel. Wes makes an impression right away, with a serpentine vocal melody that jumps up and down between his "high voice" and his "normal voice" - this will either prove exhilarating or distracting, depending on your feelings about high-pitched male singers. I think it's quite lovely and an effective use of a talent. What seems like the song's chorus is really just a red herring - a mellow, ethereal break in the rhythm just so he can remind the listener to relax and let go of the million difficult things they're trying to achieve all at once. It's one of the more straightforwardly Christian songs on the project - Wes's words can sort of be seen as the words of Jesus, reminding us to place all of our burdens on Him, but thankfully using emotionally relatable language instead of churchy jargon to make this point. When the song gets to its true chorus, the band drops one beat out of the rhythm just to throw you off and make it sound like Wes is getting ahead of the others, but he's not - it's a dizzying effect where they're all together in something like 7/8 time, but Kelsey Harelson's drums are trying to fool you into thinking it's 4/4. While you're trying to make sense of it all, one cautionary line is repeated several times: "You're coming around now, you want to get older - but don't forget how to stay alive." And then Andy Moore gives us a guitar solo in that offbeat time signature - Deas Vail is off to an awesome start with this one, immediately asserting their penchant for being unpredictable while also being incredibly catchy.

Surface
We realize our faults and cover up our eyes
Our moment's over
To the sound of nervous glances
We will chance these final dances...
This might be the one spot where I think the album falters, and it's more due to the production than anything else. Andy unleashes more of your typical, distorted type of power chords right at the beginning, and there's a bit of a shift in volume after the song that just finished, which makes the guitar intro sound thin and a bit tinny - it exposes the inconsistent production values in an otherwise beautiful record. The harder-edged guitar chords also don't fit in as well to a song that feels a bit schizophrenic - piano and Wes's high voice rule the verses, the chorus very gently floats by , and that rough-edged intro forms a bridge in between them. The melody is as lovely and punchy as any on the album, but as the song morphs into its synth-heavy bridge (which actually repeats as the song very quickly fades out - these guys seem to often avoid going back to the chorus once they reach the bridge of a song), it becomes apparent that there's not quite enough force behind this one to really sell it. Too many competing textures to really function as a cohesive whole, I think. I still enjoy the song, but I think that ending it firmly on one last guitar riff, and remixing it a bit to give the drums a lot more depth, would go a long way towards making this the breakout rock radio single that it obviously wants to be.

Rewind
This is how it feels to break up sound waves, and fall into a quiet place
This is how it feels to stay the same and leave your side...
Deas Vail could go head-to-head with Future of Forestry here, since this track is stylistically similar to their sound with its rich keyboards that sort of resemble bells, its U2-esque drumming, and the emotional outpouring in its chorus. It's one of the album's most single-worthy tracks, which is likely why the band decided to shoot a video for it and put it on their MySpace - the lyrics here are a little more repetitive, which I suppose makes the chorus easier to remember later on (you might not recall the title, but you'll remember the music going by at warp speed as Wes sings about breaking up sound waves). The band pulls a neat trick after the mellow bridge with its twinkling piano - they slowly build into an extended crescendo filled with nothing but beautiful "aaah-aaah-aaah"s. It never leads back into the chorus, but it doesn't matter - once Laura's lovely vocal line shows up, ringing out above the other guys' harmonies, you'll realize that words aren't necessary for music to create a sense of near-orgasmic joy.

Shoreline
This give and take, this waiting on time
It's this twisted up memory that I can't unwind
These fragile words that fall from my mouth
I'm crumbling and crowded, but I've figured you out...
This song is like, the definition of transcendent beauty. When I first heard this one I was swept away within the first few seconds, due to Laura's gorgeous piano chords, which are sustained throughout the entire song, giving it a steady rhythmic anchor despite being as light as a cloud. A cello, and later some other strings, emote softly during the first few verses just to add to the grandeur, and only the drums feel out of place when they join in during the second verse - the rhythm is basic and a bit plodding, and it almost seems like the song would feel freer with no percussion at all. Well, maybe I should take that back, because the full band really needs to be there for the unbelievable crescendo, when the chord sequence changes up a bit, and Wes switches into his highest vocal register as he calls out from an abandoned beach, yearning to explore the true depths of his soul, but perhaps a bit afraid to get his feet wet. The song stretches out to over five minutes, and yet unlike most epic ballads of that length, I could play this one over and over and not tire of it for quite some time. When it finally ends as Wes repeats the refrain softly one octave lower, it still seems too soon.

A Lover's Charm
Raise the price upon your life
And the heartache that it brings
Watch these feathers fall from our skies
As the angels lose their wings...
The album's most amazing songs show up in a one-two punch, as the second one kicks off here with a punchy musical interlude of crashing drums and glistening piano and basically everyone banging about in the most melodic way possible to a rhythm of 10/8, after which everything falls away completely except for Wes's voice, left to sing the first verse free of rhythm, all out there by his lonesome, giving me the vision of a man looking for his lost love in a dense forest at sunset. If you're inclined to think that his high-pitched singing bugs, and you actually made it all the way through "Shoreline", this'll probably be the point where you call it quits, as he sings each verse at about the highest pitch he can reach. (Either that, or you'll find yourself thinking, "OK, now this must be the girl singing.") For the rest of us, though, it echoes the most romantic longings deep within us, making analogies about women waiting to be asked for a dance, and angels falling from grace, and things of that nature, to illustrate (what I'm assuming is) the emotional state of a God waiting for a prodigal son to return home. I haven't connected all of the dots yet, but I don't feel like I have to when this song is so beautiful - you feel what they mean even if your mind can't quite grasp it. The bulk of the song is played in what sounds like 6/8 time, but the punchy chorus, which cries, "Don't walk away from me!" definitely messes with the rhythm a bit just to offer a little more dramatic punch. And for the last verse, it all falls away again, just leaving Wes and an acoustic guitar, before one last echoing tremble from the electric guitar brings us back into the song's intro, which is now the outro, and it comes crashing to a fantastic halt, leaving the listener marveling at a song that seems to be constantly shifting and yet leaves its melody firmly lodged in the brain.

Follow Sound
Is this just a game we play together?
Do you think we'll ever know
If the pros and cons allow for us losing hope?
Wow, four massively epic songs in a row - is that even possible? This one's actually the longest track on the album, though still a relatively upbeat song that just goes through several sections before finally reaching another frenetic apex at right around the five minute mark. This one might lose a few listeners because it does cover a lot of musical ground without establishing a definitive hook that it comes back to, but at the same time, I think it's an interesting exercise to sort of "through-compose" a pop/rock song with different riffs and musical motifs, which seems to deviate from the 4/4 rhythm but actually keeps it consistent throughout. Truth be told, this one's still a bit abstract and one of the toughest tracks on the album to interpret or even summarize, but I do find myself captivated by the hushed delivery at the end, where Wes sings lovingly, "You can say anything to me", before opening up into that pounding outro I alluded to, in which he passionately declares, "The sun is shining bright and I promise there's a world out there!"

Anything You Say
For this foreign affair I will abide as the middle man
Cause the solo cry is more than I can stand
So I walk on air, and awkwardly seek out a child's form
And I know that you won't lead me to the storm
I like how a song entitled "Anything You Say" follows a song that declares, "You can say anything to me", but what's really impressive here is how this song's tricky intro makes it hard to figure out whether we're dealing with 6/8 time or 4/4. Laura's piano melody during the first verse gives it away, as you're assaulted on both sides with another lovely tune and some unbelievably thick and fast-paced drumming - Kelsey clearly wants to be the prog version of U2's Larry Mullen, Jr., and if you were to rewrite an up-tempo, punchy song from War in 6/8 time, this is probably what it would sound like - well, until he completely changes things up in verse two by playing normal 4/4 despite the rhythm still being 6/8. (In case you hadn't guessed it, Deas Vail might not be for listeners who have a really bad sense of rhythmic timing, because they can be tricky to follow in that department.) The guitar-driven chorus in 4/4 is a little more conventional, and I'm not sure that they pull off the switch from one to the other convincingly, but it's still a great song about being encouraged by someone to get out of your rut and make a true, lasting change from cowardice to bravery.

Shadows and City Lights
Downwards we operate, and I go all to pieces
For just once you imitate someone who is loving, and I am scared of you...
Other than "Shoreline" and the half-songs that bookend the album, this is one of the few ballad-type songs on All the Houses Look the Same, and even then the distinction is blurred, because what starts out as a slow-burning, lighter-waving sort of tempo evolves into something more upbeat midway through, only to be brought back down to Earth by a somewhat meandering musical bridge dominated by warm but mellow keyboards. OK, so we might have another slightly schizophrenic tune on our hands (with another more conventional, guitar-heavy chorus), but that's alright. Listen more closely to the words, and it becomes an emotional highlight, as Wes is trying to work out how he feels toward someone who he feels is only pretending to love him. He's facing the fact that he has to stand up for himself and say no to whoever it is, knowing that this will leave him all alone without a shoulder to cry on. It could be someone that he had to break up with, or an overbearing parent, but whoever it was, the song doesn't offer any easy answers. The song seems to be saying that sometimes you have to take a stand against someone who is hurting you, even if being blunt and telling them you're done with them will cause them some pain and part of you doesn't want to rock the boat.

For Miles to Come
We're taking our time with this
While you're calling to sort out our weaknesses
We're putting our lives in this
Falling over ourselves 'til it all makes sense...
It's around this point in the album where I started having trouble telling the songs apart the first few times I listened all the way through. Now I think they're all pretty distinctive, but since none of them give away what their choruses will sound like when you hear the verses, it's understandable that you might not recall later which catchy chorus morphed out of which attention-getting verse. Anyway, this song's got a bit of a start-stop rhythm in the verses that is a bit distracting - again, anything they can do to fool you into thinking they're not playing in common time when they really are. This time, they kind of stumble into a straight-ahead chorus that reminds me a bit of The Everglow-era Mae, declaring a sort of strength that is found in admitting one's faults. What I like most about this one is the rapid interplay between the piano and drums during the instrumental break.

Life in These Little Boats
You say this constant change in plans is tossed about in plastic hands
Don't you feel that?
And though we're out here on our own, we're a thousand miles from home
We could make it, and we could take this in our hands...
I love that this album more or less goes hurtling towards its conclusion rather than backing off with ballad after ballad like what you'd expect a "sensitive guy" band to do. This is Deas Vail at their most affricated - Wes seems to be navigating an obstacle course laid down by the frenetic bouncing back and forth of the drums during each verse, and then the guitars get revved up for one desperately explosive chorus. "We could fall between these lines if you would work with me!", Wes cries, and I'm not sure what that even means, but I'm certainly rooting for this escape "from the belly of the sea" that he's trying to convince someone they need to make - the person doesn't even seem to realize they're chained up in a dank, smelly brig of some ship far out in the ocean.

This Place Is Painted Red
Why won't you open up?
I want to be held again as the walls are falling down
Cause I forget what it was like
Before you were asleep there underground...
Kelsey sets the pace for one final up-tempo tune as he gets a rather nervous, rat-a-tat sort of rhythm going - you'll swear that he's a little late on the timing and this must be some sort of funky time signature, but nope - still 4/4. It does change up a bit for the chorus, which seems to be a sad cry for help to a person who is already too far gone to listen, either because they're physically dead or they've just flatlined emotionally. Very emotionally engaging stuff, though this might be one point where I tire of the rhythmic experimentation, because the chorus does seem to stumble over itself a bit. Still, it's an effective climax - which any upbeat song placed at the end of an album really should be, because the band must know it's there in lieu of the expected slow-burning anthem. Amidst cries of "We were so lost!", the band switches back into 6/8 time for one last swaying crescendo, complete with more strings, eventually dissolving into a tinkling piano outro from Laura that nicely bridges the gap between the pure density of most of these songs and the total simplicity of the album's final track.

...Still
The collapse of the world on the quietest day
This time it's the sun standing still...
The album ends where it began, by offering us the conclusion of its meek opening number, which still consists of just Wes's voice and Laura's piano... well, this time there's a tiny bit of gentle caressing of the electric guitar, just to add to the mood. It sort of ends on a resolved note, as the song slows to a halt with Wes observing "the sun standing still"... and then there's an inexplicable minute of silence or so before the CD stops spinning. Maybe that's just there to out a definitive break in between the conclusion and the beginning of this song coming around again when you restart the CD. I don't care for long gaps of silence on CDs, but if that's about the biggest complaint I can make about this album, then it must mean that the time they spent actually making sound was definitely worth my while.

I can't help it - I tried to keep my critic's hat on while discussing All the Houses Look the Same, but most of the time I couldn't keep from gushing about all of the strong emotions that this disc makes me feel. I'm not ashamed to heartily recommend an album that makes me feel something if it can back that up with truly impressive musicianship, and Deas Vail accomplishes exactly that, which is honestly surprising for a band that is still so green. They've come up with one of the best debuts that I've ever heard - just today, I was making a list of my all-time favorite debut albums, and Deas Vail charted in my Top 20. They're either setting me up for massive disappointment later on (which I'll grudgingly admit is possible if the CCM market starts to notice them for some strange reason), or promising to be a solid source of unpredictably passionate songcraft for years to come, long after some of those "piano rock" bands that I'm into right now have proven to be a temporary fascination. Time will tell, but I'm pulling for the latter.

ALBUM WORTH:
Standing... $.50
Light as Air $1.50
Surface $1
Rewind $2
Shoreline $2
A Lover's Charm $2
Follow Sound $1.50
Anything You Say $1.50
Shadows and City Lights $1
For Miles to Come $1
Life in These Little Boats $2
This Place Is Painted Red $1
...Still $.50
TOTAL: $17.50

Band Members:
Wes Blaylock: Lead vocals, keyboards
Laura Beth Hudson Blaylock: Keyboards, synth, backing vocals
Andy Moore: Guitars
Kelsey Harelson: Drums
Jonathan Childs: Bass

Website: http://www.myspace.com/deasvail

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Driving