Venice is Sinking - AZAR

General Ratings:

Music: 7
Lyrics: 4
Scope: 5
Consistency: 7

RIYL: Low, Andrew Bird, ATNTIIO-era Yo La Tengo

Further Listening: Dirty on Purpose, Mus, Do Make Say Think

Place of Origin: Athens, GA

Instrument/Sounds List: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Keyboard/Synthesizer, Bass, Drums, Male/Female Multi-Tracked Vocals, Tape/Pedal Manipulation, Viola, Violin, Cello, Trumpet, Flute, Organ, Piano, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Vibraphone, Drum Machine, Tambourine, Ambient Sounds.

Mood Tones:

Season: Autumn
Weather: Overcast
Time of Day: Afternoon

Song Highlights: Wetlands Dancehall, Young Master Sunshine, Okay

Favorite Lyrics:

"It's been a long night, but/
The length doesn't matter as much as it might."
(from "Young Master Sunshine")

"There's always more to say/
Some lovely shade of gray."
(from "Okay")

"Call us both to arms,/
Coded but thin,/
Our collisions leave their marks."
(from "Charm City")

Other Thoughts:

It seems that AZAR was meant to be a break-up record. Not the kind that you record when a romantic relationship ends; that was Sorry About the Flowers, Venice is Sinking's first full-length, whose birthing pains apparently proved too much for Daniel Lawson and Karolyn Troupe, the former couple at the core of the band's songwriting process. Instead, the elegiac tone struck on AZAR seems to have been intended for the band itself, as several members have since conceded that their impression upon entering the studio was that it was for the last time. How strange then, that in making a record that is obviously a swan song, they emerged re-focused, and have already recorded AZAR's follow-up(s).

It wasn't until around my 10th listen that I realized what a weird record this is. There is a spacy, almost science-fictiony atmosphere, constructed by layering synthesizers, tape manipulation, tonal percussion instruments and the occaisional drum machine, that pervades most of the record. But if this veneer is removed, and each song is investigated for its basic component pieces, the genre it seems to be drawing on most is Alternative Country: slowly strummed acoustic guitar? Check. Fiddle-style string instruments? Check. Male/female vocal harmonies? Check. Minor key noir? You get the idea. In between these two poles there is a fullness of orchestration that I find damn-near irresistible, harkening at times to Andrew Bird's studio confections and the quieter moments of Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy. This persistent melding of organic and inorganic sound will leave the smack of post-Apocalypse on your lips (when listening, I imagine the over-grown parking lots of "Nothing But Flowers" and the crumbling financial institutions of "Tables and Chairs"), even if the album's somewhat vague lyrical content never concretely underscores it.

The tracks are broken up into 3 suites, each beginning with an iteration of the title theme which leads into a pair of sister songs that mirror the tone established in the theme (The first grouping is composed of up-tempo pop songs, the 2nd quieter ballads and the 3rd somewhere inbetween). After the last one, there is a final iteration of the theme and then the song "Charm City," whose main melody is cobbled together from the 4 title tracks. This partitioning is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it grants a sense of deliberation to the the album's sequencing and makes it play more like movements of a single, sustained piece than like individual songs bundled together. On the other hand, the tonal shifts in transitioning from one suite to the next can be jarring and at times a bit forced. I'm also curious about the choice of suite sequencing, as the 2nd and 3rd seem inverted to me, the 3rd suite an obvious bridge between the others, "Wetlands Dancehall" and "Young Master Sunshine" being more of a piece with "Charm City" than "Sun Belt" and "Iron Range".

The Downside:

This record is a slow burner, and it might not leave much of an impression after the first couple of listens. I might even go so far as to call it difficult, but mostly because of the way each song is informed and contextualized by its placement within the larger framework of the record, not because any individual song is dissonant or peculiarly structured. Both Lawson and Troupe have a tendency to swallow their words, and I had to sit down with headphones and stop and start to get an approximation of the lyrics, which themselves weren't really worth the trouble, and rank as the album's most obvious flaw (although they're really more of a missed opportunity than anything; if you can't understand the lyrics, it's unlikely that a bad one will kill your buzz). While the tempos pick up here and there, for the most part AZAR has all the drive of a slowcore record, and should not be listened to while operating heavy machinery.