micropsia: The Lovely Sparrows - Bury The Cynics (2008)

29.12.08

The Lovely Sparrows - Bury The Cynics (2008)

I don't know whether I'm peeved or impressed that the Lovely Sparrows' debut full-length doesn't include a lyrics sheet. Head Sparrow Shawn Jones is a brainy songwriter with a gift for wordplay, unexpected rhymes, and occasionally startling imagery, and he gingerly combines indie whimsy with a personal despondency without coming across as cute. He's soundtracking Chris Ware panels, not Wes Anderson movies (cough Noah cough Whale). So it seems admirably modest that he doesn't reprint his lyrics, but instead lets them remain purely musical and slightly mysterious, as if his songs were musical rather than literary endeavors.

Still, Bury the Cynics almost demands to be digested with lyrics sheet in hand. The album's acoustic shuffle only sounds simple, but as on the Lovely Sparrows' previous EP, Pulling Up Floors, Pouring on (New) Paint, these arrangements twist and turn unexpectedly, exploring blind alleys and strange avenues as if mimicking Jones' lyrical approach. The music tends toward spare and folksy, favoring shaken sleighbells, demonstratively strummed acoustic guitars, soft-focus backing vocals, thrumming organs, and a Vince Guaraldi flute in the background that puts me in mind of Snoopy roaming the French countryside. More streamlined and subtle than those on the EP, these indie folk songs are inventive and ornate but neither busy nor showy, and even if there should be more drums to liven up some of the lulls, everything here sounds calibrated to frame Jones' sentiments in a diorama of emotional confusion. "Love me tender, love me true," he sings on opener "Wraith" as acoustic guitars shiver behind him. It's an obvious Elvis reference, but with a new ending: "and I'll make a wreck of you."

Although "Wraith" eventually contorts itself into such a state that the twin electric guitars sound perfectly appropriate, Bury the Cynics sounds more like a one-man show than a full-band album. The Lovely Sparrows, which offshot from the Austin band Larks & Owls, has clearly developed into a vehicle for Jones, which is just fine. Both his physical and his lyrical voices are particular enough to anchor these songs in his own creative space, to make them personal despite some obvious influences. He's wryer than Eef Barzelay, but less studious than Paul Simon. Which pretty much describes everyone in the world, but Jones takes enough from those and other artists to construct his own musical identity.

Occasionally, he sounds a bit too clever-- too in love with his own ideas on "Department of Forseeable (sic) Outcomes" and the impending-apocalyptic "Devil's in the Details" ("I've got a feeling that the horse and the rider are the same/ And if you whistle, they'll come running"). "Let's sign a new deal," he sings on the title track, "saying this one's for the cynics and this one's for you." A veteran of lower-level indie bands for nearly a decade, Jones knows how to navigate the minefields of the scene, but his braininess gets away from him. Still, he's bearable not simply because of the grain in his voice, but because he never sounds bitter, accusatory, or-- by extension-- self-righteous. His cleverness is a defense mechanism: hope in the face of cosmic indifference.