Purring, Grinding, and Tapping... Neil Halstead's Lovely Sophomore Solo Record: "Oh! Mighty Engine"
Written: Aug 10 '09 (Updated Aug 10 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: Veteran shoegazer Halstead's most emotionally resonant songwriting matched with his most concrete, unaffected performances.
Cons: It's still a bit sleepy.
The Bottom Line: In which the author shares Mr. Halstead's concerns about being the one that you don't recognize and/or being the one that's left behind.
plorentz's Full Review: Oh! Mighty Engine * by Neil Halstead
Whether recording solo or with his band Mojave 3,Neil Halstead’s whispery voice – a lightly accented sigh that falls somewhere between a sedated David Gilmour and a saffron-swooning Donovan – and his equally whispery melodies and arrangements turn out to be, simultaneously, his greatest assets and his greatest liabilities. On a track-by-track basis, it’s hard to argue against the pastoral prettiness of his songs, or the way they convey an open-journal intimacy without descending into maudlin oversharing or earnest confessional. At his best, his songs have a literary craftsmanship to them, and his stories which are just as often about the creative process as they are about creative people in love (or not) sound like they could just as easily be short fictions as memoirs. But over the course of his 2002 debut solo album, the all-too-accurately titled Sleeping On Roads, the songs all went on too long and got a bit lost in the atmosphere. It was all pretty, but 50 minutes of it in a single sitting could induce a paralysis in the listener.
Released on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records label (a significant turn of events given Halstead's long association with the legendary and legendarily moody post-punk label 4AD), fellow surfer Halstead’s sophomore album Oh Mighty Engine is not much more upbeat than his debut, and certainly a quieter, more sparsely produced affair than Halstead’s most recent album with Mojave 3 (the practically chipper Puzzles Like You, 2006). The songs are mostly picked out lightly on a guitar with little, if any, backing, his somniferous voice laying down his lines in a languid foreground. Then again, the songs here are shorter, more immediately engaging, and less adorned. These are songs for small spaces – bedrooms, dorm rooms, a crack-in-the-wall café – and the spare arrangements make you feel like you’re alone with them which, in turn, makes you pay even closer attention. Like a confidante. Or the only one who paid the five dollar cover to see the show.
At times, as with “Spinning for Spoonie”, the chord changes are minimal and meditatively repetitious, the words (“Butterfly, flap your wings…”) and melodies chant-like and mumbly. Meanwhile, songs like “A Gentle Heart” or the lilting, quietly joyous “Queen Bee” blossom like late summer wildflowers with banjo and mandolin, nylon-stringed guitar and, in the case of the latter, an actual beat. The opening “Oh Mighty Engine” is an indie folk novella in song about a girl named Cindy whose thwarted attempts to craft a paragraph (of her own indie folk novella, perhaps?) are gently thwarting the singer’s attempts to get next to her in what turns out to be a vicious cycle of frustrated ambitions, both literary and romantic. In this song, Halstead’s voice of reluctant resignation, coupled with lyrics that juxtapose creative industry against procreative longing, give the song an unexpectedly sensual undertow:
Oh, Mighty Engine of good intentions You’re purring softly beside me Grinding gently inside me Tapping totally madly… For you
On “Elevenses”, Halstead watches helplessly as a talented friend burns out on the verge of success. The song’s verses have an urgent tempo – it’s the fastest song on the record – but no percussion to speak of, so that when he realizes that “she’s blown her record deal”, the song comes to an exhausted, exasperated pause – “What are we to do?” – before picking back up. And when it does pick up at the end, there’s a tacit understanding that the song picks up because it has to. It’s obliged to. It’s the only thing keeping the girl going. (At least, it feels that way.) That exhausted sense of responsibility finds a mirror image in the song “Paint a Face” which has a quieter, more personal urgency to it, driven by a sort of abstract anxiety about time and change, age and place: “I don’t wanna be the one that you don’t recognize. I don’t want to be the one that’s left behind,” sings the thickly-bearded 38-year-old veteran shoegazer in what sounds like an internal struggle to stay vital and relevant to a world that too easily forgets, loses interest, or simply falls away.
Not only do the songs of Oh Mighty Engine represent Halstead’s most emotionally resonant songwriting to date (and that’s saying something!), they are also given his most concrete, unaffected performances. It’s still not what one might call an “exciting” record, but it’s certainly compelling and holds up beautifully to repeated listens – a lovely and lively companion for an evening walk down a neighborhood street, for afternoons spent lazing on the porch, or just for those scary moments when you start to think that maybe there’s more life in your past than your future and you have no idea what to do about it, except to maybe write that indie-folk novella.
- - - - - BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
“Oh Mighty Engine” by Neil Halstead Brushfire Records Released 7/29/2008
Produced by Neil Halstead and Robert Carranza 46 min.
SONGS: Oh Mighty Engine – Elevenses – Little Twig – Witless or Wise – Paint a Face – Always the Good – No Mercy for the Muse – Sometimes the Wheels – Queen Bee – Spinning for Spoonie – A Gentle Heart – Baby, I Grew You a Beard
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.