Just when it was threatening to reach long-awaited status, Harpswell Sound have released the follow-up to 2004’s full-length debut, Skylight, and its timing is perfect for the lazy heat and humidity that awaits us. Let’s Go Anyway is an album awash in warm embracing guitars, mid-afternoon sleepy vocals, and sentiments perfect for that nine o’clock dusk where everything is possible and nothing really matters.
It is also the album every Harpswell fan should have been hoping for, showing a clear step forward in arrangement, confidence, and maturity, but abandoning none of the poetic songwriting or guitar-based alt-country sound that made them worth following in the first place. Where Wilco have taken alt-country into realms alternatingly electronica and piano ditty, and the Jayhawks get so poppy they threaten to become the Kingston Trio, Harpswell Sound have captured that alt-country soul, full of rockabilly and Hank Williams and pedal steel, and combined it with an indie rock winsomeness that’s really hard not to fall in love with.
For this album, Harpswell Sound have been helped along by mixer/masterer Kramer, one-time head of Shimmy Disc Records, which released discs by progressive rock heroes King Missile and the academic metalheads GWAR. He was also the bassist for Ween and the Butthole Surfers for a while. Lately, he’s turned his talents back to mastering, where Kramer feels the industry has been let down by certain high-profile masterers (he doesn’t name names), who depend too heavily on compression and making every level come back to the norm.
Thus, Kramer has let fly on Let’s Go Anyway with every bright guitar shimmer and thrilling half-wail uttered by lead vocalist (most of the time) Trey Hughes. His mix is spot-on, too, letting the vocals come to the fore, supported by layers of guitars and organ that provide a foundation you could sink in permafrost.
Often, the songs build from the barest of sounds, like the wonderful “Tankful of Gas,” which opens with a solo guitar piece, joined after a verse by the bass and Mike Dank’s always crisp drums, and then echoed an octave higher by a second guitar. Like many of the songs here, it’s a yearning tune about everyday losses and struggles: “Days like this get filled up so quick/With food, fun, admissions, errands, and lists.” This leads into the first chilling chorus, built for teary-eyed singalongs by high-school sweethearts heading off to different colleges in the cars daddy bought them. “I miss you now,” Hughes agonizes, “I knew that I would/And I know sometimes missin’ you’s good.” He draws the words out so that the spaces can be filled by a melancholy organ wash, a perfect stand-in for that missing love: “You’re the space between words, when words go slow.” Then the song finishes with a guitar break that impresses with its subtlety, just slightly fuzzed out, rough around the edges like the light coming in the window in the morning after a bit of a bender.
But Harpswell won’t let you wallow in their sound for too long. They follow “Gas” immediately with the jump blues of “Skitter,” showing off the rockabilly chops of new-found bassist Kris Day, of King Memphis and Sean Mencher Combo fame. Throughout the album, Day ably fills the hole left by the “retired” John Takami, but one has to wonder how Day can continue with bands as successful and busy as King Memphis and his soon-to-be mates in Jerks of Grass and remain committed to a band like Harpswell Sound, who’ve so successfully separated themselves with an original and engaging sound.
I certainly would try to find a way to keep him around after the performance he puts in on the instrumental “Ride” (and how can you argue with a band who makes room for an instrumental on its 13-song album?). The piece opens psychedelic like the Sadies can be, a call and response between the two guitars, one bouncing a quick strum, the other following with a quick run of notes. But Day’s bass drives the song early, a Latin vamp recalling Built to Spill in its more aggressive moments. At almost exactly the half-way point, though, the tune takes a serious slow-down, while guitars talk to each other about where they want the song to go. Are we hearing some improv in the third minute here? Finally, everything quiets and the bass comes back in, following the guitar lines for melody until the finish. Exquisite.
“Ride” is sandwiched between Ron Harrity’s two turns on lead vocals, neither of which quite live up to the excellent “Funfair” from Skylight, but definitely add an infusion of pop and intrigue, especially with the not-as-silly-as-it-sounds “Walking Rabbits.” A modern honky-tonk, listen for the chord walks from the G to the C.
