PAY ATTENTION: Joshua Madore |
The Portland music scene has a case of the single white males. While solo artists fronting bands have from the days of Elvis captivated the record-buying public, it’s hard to believe Portland has ever been so infested with the species. Led (in spirit, anyway) by the ghost of Ray LaMontagne, the likes of Pete Kilpatrick, Roy Davis, Jake Roche, Graham Isaacson, and now Joshua Madore with The Same Mistakes, have each in the past year released a disc featuring a collection of backing studio musicians and an active producer.
In each of these cases, the help is up to the task, often accounting for much of an album’s sound. What would LaMontagne’s Till the Sun Turns Black be without Ethan Johns’s string arrangements? Where would Davis be without brother Calvin Goodale on guitar and bassist Bernie Nye? For Madore — whose dark whisper of a vocal is more along the lines of Isaacson and LaMontagne than the poppier Kilpatrick, Davis, and Roche — the show-stealer is As Fast As bassist Hache (the former Pat Hodgkins), whose active, clean bass lines serve melody and harmony parts on nearly every tune.
On the opening (and probably best) “Daffodils and Pills,” it’s his warm invitation to the song that makes you stick around for Madore’s light acoustic swirls and quiet, breathy delivery. Reminiscent of early-career Jose Ayerve, Madore rarely lets the listener peek inside his real voice. He offers a change-up late with a G. Love-style “do-do-do what you do best,” and the chorus is a winner, but could use a little oomph: “Daffodils and pills/So she can smile every day/She fills her prescription/She just walks away.”
“Courthouse” picks up the pace a bit on track two and here it’s a phrase of bright keyboards from Karl Anderson (Kingpin Wrecking Crew) lighting the way for a dark theme: “I’m bleeding all the way to your courthouse/There’s something wrong with this town/I’m bleeding all the way to your doorstep/There ain’t no place I’d rather come down.” Those keys are part of a dedication to melody that’s likely influenced by Jon Wyman, who not only participates with the knob turning here, but also gets credit for guitar, keys, backing vocals, and percussion. I’d peg him as the egg shaker on “Next Available Flight,” though that and the major chord change in the verse turnaround are both a little out of place on the song.
We get another good illicit materials reference here, too: “Do the drugs you take make you feel safe?”
If I sound cranky at this point, it’s because this album was a little frustrating for me. The songwriting is solid, the musicianship is airtight, and I mostly buy Madore’s whisper shtick, but the album leaves me unsatisfied like a too-small portion at a great restaurant. Is it that the musicians don’t have the right chemistry? I find it cheesily possible. I’d posit (though won’t defend at gunpoint) that Dominic and the Lucid’s disc of last year was one of its best because it may have been built on frontman Dominic Lavoie, but it sat on the foundation of drummer Chuck Gagne and bassist Nate Cyr, his longtime mates.
