From the peculiar background hum preceding the opening of “The New Year,” to the epiphany contained in the final lyrics of “A Lack of Color,” the words of Benjamin Girrard have found a perfect match in the complex music composed by the band.
The heart of this terrific album is the group of songs expressing the singer’s distress at the separation between himself and an unnamed acquaintance and the desire for reunion. The wish to annihilate space is described in the first track, “The New Year:” “I wish . . .I could travel just by folding the map . . ./There’d be no distance that could hold us back.” Where distance here slightly disturbs the singer, by the time we hear the title track spatial separation overwhelms him. The Atlantic becomes a metaphor of isolation: “I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat . . ./And the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row . . ./I need you much closer.” The song begins with bare piano chords and a soft, distorted drum beat. Over the next seven minutes instruments are progressively layered on and the rhythm builds into a musical knocking at the “door” of the person addressed, culminating in the lyric above. However, on the final repetition the singer utters words not appearing in the printed lyrics: “So come on!” This seems a subtle coercion placing the responsibility for separation on the person behind the door.
This implicit coercion is more blatant in the songs concerning time. For example, there’s the “smoking gun” held by the singer’s acquaintance in “Expo ’86,” a song about the endless series of broken affairs (represented rhythmically by irregular breaks in the melody during the chorus) in which singer and acquaintance continue to engage. The singer expresses a personal link between time and violence in “Tiny Vessels,” in which he is haunted by memory of the pain he caused someone by simulating love:
So one last touch and then you’ll go
And we’ll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile and it was cheap
And you are beautiful, but you don’t mean a thing to me.
The echo shared among bass, piano and (returned) background hum signifies memory’s lingering. The singer can’t demolish time any more than space.
Several elements from earlier songs—the bare piano chords of “Transatlanticism,” the echoes of “Tiny Vessels,” and the broken rhythms of “Expo ’86”—are transformed in the near-utopian situation of “Passenger Seat.” The singer is content, seated in the car next to the beloved driver, and the violence of separation is (mostly) kept at bay. The acoustic instrumentation and straightforward harmonic scheme create a peaceful mood. The only indication this may be fantasy arrives in the final line: “for all time:” “time” is sung on the fourth tone of the scale, a startlingly disharmonious moment, repeated before the song ends.
In the final track, “A Lack of Color,” the singer is again alone, distressed by his isolation. Yet, the last lines reveal that he has come to terms with, and accepted responsibility for, that isolation. With a last attempt to take control of time by calling specifically at “7:03,” he leaves a message asking “for you to come home/But I know it’s too late, and I should have given you a reason/to stay.” While the music begins discordant and broken, by the time the singer admits his own culpability, the chords are plain and played on acoustic guitar and piano, signaling acceptance of separation.
The journey from anguish to acceptance, presented on this well-crafted album, is a very moving and rewarding listening experience.