French Quarter – Desert Wasn’t Welcome LP (Offtempo)
Steven Steinbrink has made two quite excellent albums, and has proven himself one of the unsung lights of the latter-day home studio style musician, wringing a great deal of emotion and artifice from modest means. Desert Wasn’t Welcome sadly feels like a step back in ways. Recorded with a full band at Dub Narcotic, the sudden jump in production quality and need to arrange for a bigger band, sets some obvious traps for these guys, and on most apart from a few tracks (the buttoned-down mind exploration of “Got Ideas” and the hopeful realism of “Checks and Balances,” underlit by a competent rhythm section) there seems to be a pull towards known, tired influences – Death Cab, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, The Sea & Cake – with the same small-scale songwriting that provided all of the intimacy those earlier records required, and it tends to get lost in the shuffle. It was way too hard to lose myself in these songs for some reason – I know there is talent here, and it is kind of obscured by some need to follow what might be the “standard” way for a project like this to develop. I await the next French Quarter album, and hope that it doesn’t pull the punches that Desert Wasn’t Welcome does in order to seem like it could contend with known quantities. This guy was best when he was alone, and with that backing vocalist on the second album. Maybe he’ll find his way back. (http://imprint.offtempo.com)
(Doug Mosurock)
