Whatnot |
The Whatnot open their sophomore full-length, One More for Pocket, with “Apathy,” a song that appears to be about writer’s block. Perhaps that explains our two-and-a-half year wait for this follow-up to the very well put together What You Make of It? Or maybe the grind of trying to hold down crappy jobs and be a working band left them without much in the old pocket for studio time and duplication fees.After listening to this fairly personal album, you get the idea that it’s one of those all-of-the-above things for Chris Mathews (percussion), Matt Junkin (bass), and Patrick Curry (guitar), who as a trio deliver some of the best vocals you’ll hear anywhere. Seriously, you could swim in these harmonies, which generally overcome some small amount of repetition in the songwriting to make this an album any fan of folk-pop-rock should think about picking up.
Yes, they still sound like Guster, or what Guster used to sound like, and like Guster’s latest album, they pull some new tricks out of their bag, mostly in the form of helpful fellow Seacoast musicians. Duncan Watt, especially, does some great work on the keyboards, effecting an organ sound on “Apathy” to underscore that very emotion in the song’s extended fade-out. You’ve also got to hand it to Melvern Taylor (who’s got his own Fabuloso dropping this week, July 22 at the White Heart). He finds a way to work that ukulele of his into all kinds of places it doesn’t normally belong, and it provides an interesting quickening to the well composed “Times Means Nothing,” the phrasing and lyrics matching the title’s sentiment.
Strings savant Andy Happel gets in on the action, too, mostly late in the album, like on the last tune, “Think About It,” where that record-going-backward sound that producer Jon Wyman likes so much introduces a pair of guitars, electric and acoustic, that lead into a full strings arrangement. Like most of the 11 songs here (well, 10 and a “Reprise”), I was considerably conscious of the fact that the song requires more than the three-man band that is the Whatnot. I suppose it’s no different than Ray Charles bringing in a full 50-piece chorus and orchestra for “Georgia on My Mind,” but it still calls into question what exactly this album is a document of, and what exactly is the Whatnot.
Still, if you’re having that debate with yourself, you’re probably invested enough in the music to care, which is a good thing.
And if you’re that invested in the music, you might find yourself invested enough in the band to wonder what’s wrong with them. They sometimes seem mighty depressed. On “Think About It,” “You’re making me feel lazy, but that just ain’t the case/All I ever do is run around, like a chicken with no head/I’d rather be in bed.”
On “She Wins Again,” “There are times when I’m headstrong and serious/And there are times when I need a break/But no one’s saying they envy the cash I make.”
On “Time Means Nothing,” “I keep my head up high, I’m raising up, start again/Work my nine to five, please tell me does it ever end?/I feel like dosing off, drifting out in a dream/With hope that they would slowly carry me to a place where time means nothing, time means nothing.”
