“Summer Yawns” features a throaty low guitar chunk in the background, and threatens to evolve into a simple rocker, but then there’s this cool pairing of the vocals and the guitar in a run up and down the octave, just enough of a change-up to completely alter the face of the song. Lavoie here shows off his psychedelic leanings: “Weekend worlds, see sun girls/Free falling love yous/Makeup washed off, beer eyes gone, leave the room/Neither one of you has more to prove.” Just as you’re wondering if that makes sense or not, Lavoie notes that “freedom isn’t doing a damn thing,” showing he has more than one thing in common with Janis Joplin.
Closer to home, Lavoie cops Spencer Albee’s delivery in “Lovely Lonely,” with As Fast As-style 4/4 guitar chords bouncing off Nate Cyr’s bass-line to boot, but the Lucid change things up (tempo, delivery, time signature) more often than As Fast As are likely to do, releasing some pure pop energy in exchange for a surprise here and there. It’s a different philosophy that depends on a different level of listener investment, something more likely to occur in a live show than with a first spin of a disc.
Yes, like much of this textured album, enhanced by the engineering of local studio vets Jack Murray and Jim Begley and the mixing of Jon Wyman, it’s a slow build. It might be listen four or five before you appreciate Cartwright Thompson’s pedal steel on “A Killer You Kissed in the Dark;” maybe you don’t get unnerved by the giggling girls at the end of “Lovely Lonely” until you put on the headphones.
It’s almost enough to make you wonder if, just like a good band’s live show, it isn’t a little bit different every time.
