There’s an idea in statistics called the most parsimonious model. Say you want to generate a model to predict scores on a standardized test; you might throw IQ, socio-economic status, mother’s educational attainment and GPA into your statistical model and, using those factors, hope to predict something like SAT scores with a reasonable amount of accuracy. Maybe that model gets you accurate predictions 95% of the time. If, however, you only put IQ and mother’s educational attainment in the model, you get a 92% accuracy rate. You’d go with the second model because it has more parsimony; it’s not worth it to throw in three extra factors for an extra 3% of confidence. Simply put, the model that gets the best results and has the fewest factors is the one that is the most desirable. Justin Andrew’s recently released Transplant works right in the wheelhouse of the most parsimonious model; it’s haunting vocals, acoustic guitars and understated instrumentation drive lyrically impactful songs. It is, at it’s core, a simple record, one that incorporates very little extraneous material or ideation. The result, however, is awesome. Dude doesn’t need any complicated bells and whistle to impress; in terms of the model, he’s got very few factors making huge impact. That kind of simplicity and power is something I can get behind.
Justin Andrew (formerly known as Pillars), currently based in Pittsburgh after a slew of geographic perambulation, has, for a good while, been cranking out well-written, quietly delicate music that you want to call folk until you listen a little closer. (Fascinating side note: Andrew’s e-mail communique with use revealed that he started his musical journey in the Boston/New York hardcore scene. Dude has taken a divergent path from, say, that of Gang Green.) There’s a four song Pillars EP from 2007 that you can snag from emusic or itunes that will give you a nice primer on Andrew’s recent musical output. (Trust us on this one; it’s only four bucks and you’ll enjoy it.) His newest release, Transplant, sheds the Pillars moniker but maintains the sweet sounds and finely tuned lyrical content of his earlier work.
Transplant works in two rough modes: a quiet strummy, deeply contemplative and mellow elegiac vibe (“Be Still Don’t Cry,” “Clarke County, OH,” “Denver by Morning,” “Winter End”) and a slightly countrified, more upbeat and fleshed out mode (“Close Your Hands,” “Fuses,” “Haunting”). That might be a bit reductive, but serves to give the EP a nice broad brush summary. Within those two rough modes, there are a lot of diverse things going on, from some nice slide guitar work to some haunting backing vocals on the latter songs and a wide range of acoustic solos and a willingness to let the songs breathe and speak for themselves on the former. On the initial listen, the punchier tracks jump out immediately. As a trio, they’re insanely catchy and that sticks the first time you listen. The quieter songs kind of blend in a bit on that initial listen; there’s a lot of subtlety going on and it takes a couple of spins to appreciate both the delicacy and depth of them. Once you start digging into the record, it becomes clear that the album’s truest virtue is the writing, which shines through on the quieter cuts. The tracks that are catchy are kind of like duded up songbirds, with some aural trapping to catch the ear, but all of the songs share an emotive rawness and insight that starts to really cut after a couple of laps.
Thematically, the album focuses on the passage of time and (in a bunch of different ways) loss. Through that, however, is a certain tough (and, I’d argue, fundamentally midwestern) optimism. The album’s first track, “Be Still, Don’t Cry,” walks through a series of funerals and deaths, with an iteratively shifting lyric (“sitting with your mother on the day that he died,”) that changes the person and the pronoun each cycle through. The song is about loss, but the focus is on the ameliorative power of family and friends; it’s heavy stuff and crazily tuneful. It’s one of the tracks that dances by, but gets really good when you listen closely. That loss/time thing pops up again and again lyrically. Little bon mots like “Can we pretend it’s last August again?,” “Every time you go, I want you as you walk away; I hate how everything is hooked onto a time and place.,” and more or less every word in “Winter End” push that aching, wistful button hard throughout. As in “Be Still Don’t Cry,” however, that kind of bleak nostalgia is tempered with plucky hope; it’s tougher to pull lyrics that hit that tone, but they’re there, I assure you. It’s worth the time to dig them out as you’re turning over the tender little koans of sadness.
Musically, Andrew is talented. The tunes themselves provide solid bedding for the well-crafted words. “Haunting,” another killer track, reminds me strongly of the opening bars of “Sky Blue Sky,” but turns left midway through, which is kind of cool; if it’s an intentional subversion of a good Wilco track, that’s completely badass. If it’s a zeitgeisty manipulation of something that’s just in the ether, that’s maybe even more so. Maybe the strongest thing I can say about the quality of the music is that Mrs. Citizen likes it; she reserves the stamp of approval for things that are really good (Dr. Dog, Vetiver), so that’s high praise.
A last nugget about the album that fills me with righteous joy: Justin Andrew has as much DIY cred as you could ever want. Recorded in somebody’s house, packaged in hand printed and numbered sleeves and pressed in limited quantities, the physical artifact of Transplant is almost as impressive as the tunes on it. The best part about having a music blog is getting my ears on stuff I might not hear otherwise. This little seven song slice of loveliness is just the latest example. We’re lobbing two tracks at you from Transplant, the shuffling, quiet “Winter End” and the album’s most polished pearl “Fuses.” Listen to them both really carefully .(“Fuses” in particular, with its wordsmithy extended metaphors is an absolute treat.) Then go get the rest. Andrew’s myspace page is a good place to start.
