Southeast Engine are coming to Cleveland; given the quality of their recently released record, From the Forest to the Sea, and the scorching live renditions of some of that album’s standout tracks in a recent Daytrotter session, it promises to be an absolutely top shelf live show.  You should go.  If you want a pair of free tickets, drop us a line.  We’ve been saving up our thoughts on the new record, released on Misra Records on February 17, for this week; we’re a little unsure about your attention span, so we thought hitting a review four days before the show might serve to keep the band fresh in your mind.  (We’re kidding, obviously.  We’re sure that your attention span is fine and dandy.  If it’s not, you’re likely to forget that we disparaged it anyway.)

From the Forest to the Sea is an ambitious record; it tackles big ideas (oil, religion, suburbia, marriage, life, death, morality…) head on and manages to make compelling and thoughtful statements about them.  It can also be seen, roughly, as a concept album, following an everyman narrator through the challenges of life, kind of a loosely structured  musical  bildungsroman about the plight of the modern man as he struggles with the demands of society and his own shifting perception of right and wrong.  The title cleverly refers to the narrative flow of the album, starting with the three part suite, “The Forest,” which describes the narrator’s journey towards ethereal maidens in a wood and ending with “From the Roots of the Mountain to Your Holy Temple,” which speaks of the narrator’s bleak descent into the sea, in search of atonement. (I never learned to swim and fear the water, so the lyrics there are particularly troubling for me: “and so I sink and I land on the floor it’s there I must make my bed where the deep is surrounding me and seaweed is wrapped around my head.”)  The songs in between tell the story of the narrator’s marriage, his work as a government cartographer, his descent into sin and his (possibly futile) attempts at salvation. Things are left implicit for the most part, with occasional forays into the concrete, but the consistent imagery of a nefarious thirst for oil, religious turmoil and internal struggle is strong and pervasive.  Even better, the story starts to emerge more clearly with repeated listens. (Like the reference to a diving bell on “Malcontent” and again in the closer, there’s a lot of stuff that sneaks up on you.) We’re not going to play spoiler here; you’ll have to make the journey yourself, but it’s well worth it to pay attention. Biting off this much heady material often leads to disaster (insert your own favorite prog-rock flameout here), but the quality of the songwriting and musicianship pumped out by Southeast Engine win the day.  The songs work independently of one another and regardless of the listener’s level of buy-in to the broader narrative; it’s a good album first and a good concept album second.

Musically, Southeast Engine sound like they rifled through my favorite records, plucked out the best ideas, ran them through their own creative grist mill and spit them back out in a vaguely recognizable but wholly unique form.  The album’s emotional and grim closer “From the Roots of the Mountain to Your Holy Temple” brings The Band’s “I Shall Be Released” to mind, but in a completely non-overt way, like the way Mrs. Citizen’s sweaters still vaguely carry her perfume three or four days after she’s worn them.  “Sea of Galilee” borrows the spastic, revival-tent atmosphere of parts of Hallowed Ground, but the band really doesn’t sound like the Violent Femmes. (For that matter, “Two of Every Kind” reminds me of “Country Death Song” for no good reason at all.)  “Black Gold” sounds like a single Wilco could have snuck onto AM.  The three movements of “The Forest”  could be seen as owing a debt to something like The Tain, but it’s more of a conceptual, rather than sonic, connection.  Listening to the album is like meeting a stranger that you have a lot in common with; each conversation they start is right in a comfortable wheelhouse, but still consistently interesting because it’s filtered through a new set of perceptions.  The record, taken as a whole, is familiar but fresh, classically influenced but completely underivative.

Southeast Engine, recorded From the Forest to the Sea in five days in June, in the auditorium of a run-down, central Ohio middle school.  The building dates to the 1880s and the band speaks of strange, ethereal sounds in the school, the blistering midsummer Ohio heat and the location’s complete lack of connection to the outside world.  The quartet, Adam Remnant (lead vocals, guitar), Leo DeLuca (drums and percussion), Adam’s brother Jesse (bass guitar, backup vocals) and Michael Lachman (Hammond organ, concertina, piano), recorded most of the tracks live on analog equipment.  For an album that hits a ton of musical and cultural touchstones, the recording process adds to the feel of the album.  It doesn’t sound like a slickly produced piece of commerce.  Rather, it’s a homespun document of middle America, in both it’s geography and technology.  It’s the kind of record that implies that you should take your imac and shove it up your ass; Southeast Engine’s doing fine with hardwood floors and rotary phones.

Southeast Engine hail from Athens, Ohio, home to Kevin and James’ alma mater, Ohio University.  (I went to Bowling Green, a fair superior state institution.)  As Ohioans, we take a certain level of pride in fellow Buckeyes crafting meritorious art.  It’s even better that we could vouch for this album if it came from Oregon or Portugal or outer space; there’s no level of homerism in our praise here.  While it might be a bit early to think about this kind of thing (or completely inane if lists aren’t your thing), it’s slotted in as one of my best of 2009 records.  The middle chunk of the record, from “Law-Abiding Citizen” through “Preparing for the Flood” is as good as anything I’ve listened to in a good long while.  The vocals are in turns warming and worried.  The guitar work is subtle and well-honed.  The keyboards add a dash of well-worn hominess that makes any record sound better.  The development of the character is stunning, notably on “Law Abiding Citizen” and “Black Gold.”  The band’s firing on all cylinders.  When the churning guitar kicks in in “Preparing for the Flood,” followed quickly by an intensifying drum beat and stomping piano bit, you’ll get goosebumps.  It’s a clear highlight on a record full of them.

“From the Roots of the Mountain to Your Holy Temple” – Southeast Engine

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As an added bonus, here’s a killer video of the band performing “We Have You Surrounded”  from A Wheel Within a Wheel in the tiny studio at Brown University’s student run radio station.  Not to harp on a single theme or anything, but this absolutely kicks ass live.  They’re coming to Cleveland.  They’re coming other places.  Get off of your sofa.