One of the few buzz bands of 2008 that didn’t catch a surf-friendly wave of hype, Chairlift just saw their debut LP, Does You Inspire You, get a re-release from Columbia Records (Kanine handled the original release). As is typical of debuts (particularly from Brooklyn’s busy buzz band market), the results were decidedly mixed, but there were more than enough good elements (and songs) to suggest that they have an above average chance of emerging as a truly worthwhile act. The re-release adds a pair of songs in the album’s midsection and expands “Make Your Mind Up” with an extended intro. While my impression of the album as a whole hasn’t changed much in the last eight months, I like it a little better, in no small part because the good songs get fonder treatment the more you relax to them instead of dissecting them for rhyme and reason.
While they manage a fine atmospheric epic that both rumbles and rambles (“Territory”), most of the choice cuts are the ones that show a fondness for discombobulated synth pop. “Garbage,” which takes smooth jazz and dreamy new age to luxuriously relaxing levels, replete with xylophones and la-la-las, is a solid opener. The hook of “Planet Health” dines in the 80s, but the restaurant is clearly Asian cuisine, and it’s a good meal for the first three minutes. Unfortunately, the “stop, drop and roll” bridge is questionable enough to make you forgive Nine Inch Nails’ “Down in It”’s “rain, rain go away, come again another day” as a pleasure not the least bit guilty. But the best remains “Bruises,” which some will recognize from iPod Nano commercials (I must have lucked out and missed ‘em ‘cause I don’t remember it the way I recall that Feist song being slapped around). Dusted with lyrical mush that’s forgivable in face of young romantics, the pretty pop melody is tough to resist, especially when singer Caroline Polachek jumps to the upper register and the synths glisten and bubble.
But when the hooks get lost in the glossy treatments on songs like “Earwig Town” and “Somewhere Around Here,” you find road bumps that, while not painful to shimmy over, are still distracting to your smooth ride. “Make Your Mind Up” tries to have it both ways, adding muscle and grit to their polished aesthetic, while Polachek lurches back and forth from a dark queen force of nature singing torrential blues to a tart-tongued lounge act chanteuse seducing you with bland enthusiasm. It’s an interesting break, but feels a bit artificial no matter the technical strength of performance. And “Evident Utensil” is the very definition of music candy—sweet when you’re sucking on it, but it doesn’t linger, and taking too much of it will make you sick to death of its danceable sweetness.
The chief fault doesn’t lie with mishandled (or ignored) hooks, even though they tend to be important in synthesizer-based music that doesn’t strive solely for mood or ambience. It’s a lack of interesting and original ideas that sometimes defeats this record. There is a futurist sophistication to many of the arrangements that gets in the way with some of their retro refitting of electropop ideas, and vice versa. And the songs are typically treated with little to no lyrical variety. “Ceiling Wax” just drones on about leaving town without evoking an interest in why; maybe she’s trying to escape “Earwig Town,” which just describes itself as a town full of earwigs that “lay their eggs and crawl out the right.” Based on the early mention of “A uniform telephone call/An unknown caller, and unknown face,” we can assume that it’s metaphorical, but there’s nothing besides that to offer shape to that theory. Meanwhile, can you guess what the “Evident Utensil” is based on rhyme scheme? I’ll give you a hint: you write with it.
As for the re-issue additions, they’re a mixed blessing. “Le Flying Saucer Hat” and “Dixie Gypsy,” the two new tracks, don’t add a whole lot to the mix. A band that traversed from Colorado to New York comes off a little precious singing in French on the former, but there’s a surreal beauty to the whole thing that makes it worthwhile. “Gypsy” meanwhile sounds like a series of differing melody snippets slapped together that never quite gels and doesn’t really pay off. But good or not, their addition makes the disc’s running time slightly less manageable, which is particularly problematic since the home stretch is marked with some of their most unusual and difficult-to-immediately-swallow ideas. Among those are the overt country ballad twang of “Don’t Give a Damn” and the creaky retro collage on “Chameleon Closet” which bleeds into closer, “Ceiling Wax.”
Despite the faults, the re-release still reminds us that Chairlift shows enough promise to hint at potentially rewarding returns in the future. Still searching for a more focused identity and aesthetic, the musicians are sound enough to prove they are capable of just about anything in their genre and Polachek has a lovely, opera-trained voice. And “Bruises” is still as good a pop song now as it was last year. Now we can eagerly await a full-length that delivers more than just a few quality tracks worth repeating.
"Does You Inspire You" is on sale April 21, 2009 from Columbia.
