Melody-rich duo turns down the guitars, turns up the keyboards
To their credit, the Posies have never abandoned the DIY pop melodicism of their debut, Failure, but neither have they stood still. Their tours of duty with Big Star helped resurrect the iconic band as both a touring entity and recording outfit, and while it may have further informed the Posies, it didn’t turn them into a clone. The enduring chemistry between Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow has seen the Posies through more than three decades of changes, including divorces, relocations and the passing of bandmates. The duo’s melodic and harmonic connections draw a line through their catalog, even as their latest – their first album of original material since 2010’s Blood/Candy – lowers the guitar quotient for productions often driven by keyboards.
Thirty years in, the pair is more musically sophisticated and their studio technology is greatly advanced from the late-80s, but the enthusiasm and freedom of their debut repeats itself here. As the band has pointed out, in many ways this represents a return to the self-produced home studio recordings of their debut. And with the passing of their rhythm section, they are effectively a duo again. There’s a modern tone to the anthemic “Titanic,†as there is to much of the album, but with the warmth of a musician’s humanity that’s missing from most of today’s producer-helmed pop hits. The keyboards are ingratiating, and the percussion deftly mixes electronic and acoustic elements.
It’s a departure, but one that fans will easily take to, and one that’s papered over with the familiarity of the duo’s voices and hooks. The album opens with the call-to-arms “We Are Power,†exhorting collective action over individual passivity. Anti-authoritarianism pops up again in “Squirrel vs. Snake†and “The Plague,†and “M Doll†eviscerates the culture of celebrity marketing mannequins. But it’s not all social critique, as there are several songs of romantic rapprochement, cautiously seeking to engage, resurrect or simply support, and the easy synthpop soul of “Rollercoaster Zen†has a hook that’s hypnotic in its repetition.
Auer and Stringfellow play everything here but drums, which fall variously to Frankie Siragusa and Kliph Scurlock, and add a few guest voices to the backing choruses. Their melodies span from immediately hummable to complex, with several suggesting the minor-key sophistication of the Zombies. Those who have been enamored of the Posies melody-rich music will find it intact; it’s not a rehash of what they’ve done before, it’s a musical extension that breaks new ground while hanging on to the band’s essence. [©2016 Hyperbolium] 