The Jayhawks fly to production land with Bob Ezrin

How you came upon the Jayhawks is likely to be the largest factor in your pleasure or displeasure with this album. If you were an acolyte of the group’s early albums, even if you enjoyed the fuller turn of Hollywood Town Hall and wider range of Tomorrow the Green Grass, there’s a good chance that the highly polished, at times synthetic, productions of Smile may be too much change for you. But if you approach this album without fretting the group’s history, you’ll find it a superb collection of melodies and arrangements that strongly echo the cross-product of craft and earthiness of many great early 1970s albums. Big Star is a touchstone, but so is Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Badfinger and pre-disco Bee Gees.

Many of this album’s seeds were planted in the band’s first Gary Louris-led release, Sound of Lies, but if you can’t fathom Gary Louris double-trackinging his lead vocals in front of a small chorus of backing singers (including Karen Grotberg and producer Bob Ezrin), then the sheen of these tracks will, ironically, grate on your ears. Even those who love the classic ’70s rockisms may still puzzle over the odd synthesizer twerps Ezrin’s dropped here and there and the rudimentary drum machine patterns that provide the foundation of a few tracks. The album might have split in half had Louris’ songs not laid a consistent mood across the earthy and synthetic sounds Ezrin dabbed and layered onto the productions.

The line between a band freed and subverted by their producer is a fine one, and the latter half of the album seems to weave back and forth. The dance beat of “Queen of the World” and propulsive modern-rock of “Life Floats By” are monotonous, while “Broken Harpoon” is delicately filigreed with glistening acoustic guitars, nearly subconscious vocal echoes and a wavery synthesizer. They all represent production touches brought to the studio by Bob Ezrin, but the first two extinguish the band’s identity while the latter adds highlights. The album tends more to the latter than the former, and though longtime fans expecting rootsy Americana will blanch, this is a terrific album for pop ears. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]