Stairway2Drew's Full Review: Ganging Up on the Sun by Guster
Ever since Guster's fifth album, Ganging Up on the Sun, arrived this summer, I've been curiously unsure how to feel about it.
This is rare. I am a seasoned music fan, a listener for many years, one who knows what he wants and what he likes. What I like usually means damn-near everything, of course, but that's neither here nor there. I can rank you most artists' albums - best to worst, with one or two caveats for casuality vs. fanaticism - but Guster is a rare, rare beast.
Epinions' own Paul Lorentz says it pretty well in his own review of this album: listening to Guster, you risk a forceful and immediate compulsion to listen to everything they've ever recorded, in succession. You risk becoming a fanboy, because that's the sort of audience Guster breeds. It's why they don't boast much in the way of hit singles, but they sell out modestly large venues in hours. Shortly after I began listening to Guster, my flatmate and sister began spreading the Guster gospel in pretty rapid succession. Logging into Facebook, I'd be confronted with physical evidence of this. It was right there, in plain sight, almost every day: "(so-and-so) has added 'Guster' to their favorite music".
Part of the reason Guster tend to spread like wildfire is their sound. Their first four albums are among the most immediately accessible music we've been confronted with in the 1990s: jangly guitars, both acoustic and clean electric; able (but not virtuosic) vocals by two amiable singers who know their way around vocal hooks and harmonies exceptionally well; songs that sound like they should be all over the radio, or at least in the opening credits of easygoing comedies. That is the Guster sound, and they pull it off very well.
Ganging Up on the Sun is that most hated of music-critiquing cliches: it is A Departure. We use this dreaded term to either justify the kind of studio grotesquerie that famous bands shit out in the name of experimentation, usually. But in Guster's case, it's not necessarily a bad thing; it doesn't describe the transformation of Guster into Lou Reed or They Might Be Giants or Radiohead. It describes the transformation of Guster into Guster Sounding Vaguely Like They've Been Hanging Out With Fountains of Wayne.
I suppose, then, that you could make the case for Ganging Up on the Sun being Guster's "mature record". It's an album that tones down the pop sensibility that has been this band's bread and butter ever since recording Parachute in a college dorm at Tufts without obliterating it entirely. The first track, "Lightning Rod", paints with broad colours; weird colours, almost like they rolled through the rainbow on the back of Silverchair's "Diorama" album and came back with an ethereal, haunting song about stargazing. But if Ganging Up is dealing in a little bit of a more haunting sound, they've not sacrificed a certain level of adorable naivete: "Lightning Rod" finds the narrator staring up at the sky in wonderment, and that's a wonderful sentiment to behold. When resident tenor Ryan Miller lifts the song's wordless chorus up to the skies, it all sounds pretty exciting; and while it's not the effervescent, jangly pop of Keep it Together opener "Diane", it's something decidedly more layered, and ultimately a little more unsettling.
"Satellite" kind of sounds like that, too; it was one of the singles off this album (that predictably went nowhere), and as it should be. This is a fantastic song, this album's "Careful", except a little more mysterious, a little less obvious, a little less hurried. New Guster member Joe Pisapia justifies his lofty "multi-instrumentalist" tag by coloring this song with lovely near-psychedelia, all shimmering keys and guitar lines, sounding like the song to play right after you ride off into the summer sunset playing "Careful" and it's time for something a little more ethereal. "Manifest Destiny", by contrast, trades in cheeky grandeur, trotting out plonking piano chords for a pleasant pop romp; its successor, "One Man Wrecking Machine", is the same sort of witty pop ballad Fountains of Wayne stuffed Welcome Interstate Managers with, but is curiously limp for a song befitting a description like that. Give me "Hackensack" anyday, I suppose.
Of couse, there's no shortchanging "The Captain", quite possibly the most delightful little song on the album ("Ruby Falls" is the album's delightful big song, of course, but that's neither here nor there); I'd be hard-pressed to call it typical Guster, but then, I suppose it is, albeit in a way we've never been exposed to before. The familiar elements are all trotted out: an insanely catchy Ryan Miller vocal, acoustic guitars, brisk pacing, an Adam Gardner harmony that comes up from under and snakes around Miller's higher melody; of course, it's also a country-ish stomp complete with banjo, dulcet, slide and resonator guitars, and any number of other instruments exclusive to country music, so it's atypical of Guster. Either way, it's all awesome, one of the only truly immediate delights on the album. (There are, of course, other delights, but you have to work for 'em.)
"Ruby Falls" might be the best song of the lot, though: as a man who truly hears Springsteen everywhere, I have to say, I hear echoes of early Boss epics in this song. It doesn't have any of the working-class folklore or the jowly, yelping vocals - it trades that in for a classic lilting vocal from Mr. Miller - but its dreamy, balladic qualities remind me of some of the more understated tracks on side B of Born to Run, and when it culminates in a haunting, drifting sax solo, it's straight outta "Jungleland", baby.
Of course, among all this beauty, Guster has time for a few beasts. "The New Underground" and "The Beginning of the End" are rockers, as balls-out as Guster goes with this sort of thing; of course, Guster's strong suit has never been the rockers, so the fact that these songs aren't relegated to space-fillers doesn't exactly speak volumes. Something about the clean vocal tones that this band tends to bank on doesn't exactly mesh with distorted electric guitar.
Intriguing eclectisism, I suppose, is what Ganging Up on the Sun truly offers in terms of fitting into the Guster pantheon. Nothing sounds too left-field or experimental; rather, the impressive feat is how Guster fit all these accessible sounds into songs that only reap dividends if you're willing to give them the time, and how well the album works as an ALBUM, a rare characteristic for a Guster album (they tend to be better, I think, for individual tracks). "C'Mon", a track I haven't mentioned, trots in a classic rock sound reminiscent of, say, Supertramp or Bad Company without sucking as hard, and it sounds perfect wedged in between "Ruby Falls" and the beautiful, tasteful ballad "Empire State".
If I have a complaint, it's that the element of vocal interplay is lost on Ganging Up on the Sun. Vocally, Ryan Miller emerges as the solo star of this ensemble, taking on nearly every song solo; Adam Gardner's understated baritone takes lead on one song (the choral, epic "Dear Valentine") and only prominently harmonizes on a few others ("The Captain" being the noteworthy one). I suppose it's worth the sacrifice, but I hope this isn't the beginning of Gardner's relegation to background vox.
Still, Ganging Up on the Sun is an impressive album, perhaps the most impressive one Guster have crafted. The pop songcraft isn't as easy or immediate as it's always been, but it sounds great; it's fuller, smarter, prettier. This is an exceptionally worthwhile album, and for once, I can easily recommend this to fans of the power-pop, and not just to Guster fans. Of course, you'll become one anyway, so I suppose that point will have to remain moot.
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