Music

Joseph Arthur/Our Shadows Will Remain (Vector)

By Hubert Vigilla

Friday, March 11, 2005

“Impressive” was the word a friend used to describe Joseph Arthur after checking out one of his shows. She described the concert in a mix of giddy, schoolgirl terms and music writer/hipster hyperbole. After she finished with her enthusiastic “ooh-ing” and “ahh-ing,” I wished I’d seen him too.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard of Joseph Arthur. One of my friends from Akron, Ohio (from where Arthur hails) has been raving about him for at least the last three years. Up until Our Shadows Will Remain I’d never heard his music, but by the final, eldritch quiver of Arthur’s voice on the album closer Leave Us Alone, I’d have to say that “impressive” is a pretty fitting description. Filled with pop hooks and haunting melodies, Our Shadows Will Remain is as eclectic and wondrous as Arthur’s Picasso-meets-Cocteau album art.

On Our Shadows Will Remain, Arthur shifts his sound throughout the album. On some songs he sounds like a quiet and often doleful singer/songwriter, apparent on the album’s brief Nick Drake-ish intro, In Ohio. The penultimate song, the gorgeously titled A Smile That Explode, plows similar territory, though it feels more like something by The Red House Painters. The evocative lyric “The smile that explodes I could never understand” even sounds like something Red House Painters frontman Mark Kozelek could have written. Echo Park, a nostalgic and downtrodden reverie, feels like a string-section mingling of Matthew Sweet’s I Almost Forgot and The Shins’ New Slang.

At other times Arthur sounds like Ryan Adams or Pete Yorn fronting Radiohead in the interim period between The Bends and OK Computer. The bounding and optimistic Can’t Exist – which starts quaintly enough before erupting into an emotional maelstrom – even features Thom Yorke-style banshee wail backing vocals. On the hard-luck, bluesy Devil’s Broom, Arthur’s voice grows hoarse for greater effect as he describes a state of shameful, broken nihilism. With all his belongings in a garbage bag and things not looking so hot, the song’s narrator implores in a sympathetic, woe-is-me-fashion, “Where are you? / What did I do? / Why can’t you see / You mean everything to me?”

Then there’s the fluttering, slow, soulful pop of Even Tho, a song that feels like it could have been a sleigh-bell-laden companion to The Talking Head’s This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody); Arthur even sings the song a bit like a breathy David Byrne on this shimmering, conciliatory piece. It’s followed by the boisterous, synth-saturated “Puppets,” a catchy cacophony of haunting backing vocals and bright piano.

The above pair of 80s pop blasts are an interesting juxtaposition to the second half of the album, one which strays into slower, loveless laments. The heavy dose of melancholic tryptophan on the wispy Wasted and desolate Failed fall into similar territory, both of which are mournful and pained. The finale, Leave Us Alone, occupies a strange territory all its own. It’s once again a song that’s haunted or feels that way, ending breathlessly in such as way that it sounds incomplete.

Our Shadows Will Remain’s brighter, pop-oriented moments blend nicely with the album’s overcast, downbeat dirges. It’s as if Arthur had deliberately set out to craft a record that can suit any situation, whether you feel you’re being swept away in a mire of overwhelming despair or you’re optimistically eyeing a chance to start over yet again. Yes, Our Shadows Will Remain is impressive, but more so, it has a weight and resonance that lingers after listening to it.