The Faraway Places
Out of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning
Rating: 2.5
Label: Save It Records
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I’ve been on a Brian Eno kick as of late (isn’t Low a perfect album?), so imagine my delight when The Faraway Places’ Out of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning began with what I can only assume is Brian Eno’s lawnmower. There are other, more interesting sounds in the background, but the only one that lingers in memory is the loud static engine — can you really describe a drone as “lingering”?
Immediately and mercifully, the pseudo-ambience is shattered by “The Sun Goes West,” a bit of catchy, raucous power-glam with male-female vocals that made me think I was going to have as much fun as I do listening to The New Pornographers or their Earth-2 counterparts 20 Minute Loop. The Faraway Places, then, would be the Earth-3 New Pornographers in a world where The Beatles broke up after Help! and Roxy Music somehow took the throne (probably by force) as the greatest band on Earth.
Also, on Earth-3, nobody has any personality. Read the song titles and try to figure out what the music is like: “Just Let Go,” “Back in My Head,” “Still Be There” — you’d more likely be looking at the track list of a Norah Jones album than the work of an art-glam band.
Words in general are where The Faraway Places fall regrettably short. Somehow I get the impression that the band was trying too hard to appropriate the work of T.Rex that the lyrics were an afterthought. Even in the best songs the lyrics sound like rock ‘n’ roll placeholders. The chorus of “The Sun Goes West” goes, “You can have it if you want it/ It’s only gonna bring you down.”
“F.F.F.F.Fall Down,” the worst offender on the album, is a glam pastiche with lyrical inanity like, “I took vacation for 52 weeks/ And now my pockets are full of receipts.” I never thought I’d hate a song containing the line, “I have explosions where I used to have eyes,” but here we are.
Like a good joke, it’s all in the delivery. The right vocalist can work wonders with idiotic lyrics. Why do you think people through the ’90s kept buying Bush albums? The Faraway Places’ singers sound like a less shy Kimya Dawson (until she disappears after the first few tracks) and Michael Stipe with far less mumbling. Their efforts, however, feel hollow — as if they’re not even interested in the words they’re singing.
It’s a good thing the band knows their stuff musically. “Run While True” (again, these fucking titles), a surprisingly mellow, dark song with ambient synth and a 1970s BBC sci-fi beeping refrain. Despite the ephemeral lyrics, it might be the best song on the album — the point where the band doesn’t feel like it’s aping a specific sound but rather coming into its own.
Shame that grasp at self-actualization happens with the penultimate track (ignoring the Brian Eno lawnmower reprise outro), which is followed by “Still Be There,” a pitch perfect imitation of The Spiders From Mars with infectious opening guitars that, again, the lyrics do their best to sabotage. Still, like the rest of the album, it feels more like amusing pastiche than an actual song.
While mostly agreeable as background music, Out of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning ends up a forgettable collection of lackluster ideas: a Brian Eno production without the interesting bits, The New Pornographers without the hooks, 20 Minute Loop without the weird, oblique lyrics — all sung by Michael Stipe without whatever the hell it is that makes Michael Stipe good.
by Danny Djeljosevic
