American Tragic

Heather is wonderful!

popy. FUN. Tragic.

People like to call Wax Idols goth, and I suspect that's mainly due to bandleader Hether Fortune's much talked about day job as a dominatrix, and the fact that they've been photographed wearing Siouxsie t-shirts. While there were some goth-ish leanings on their last album, the promising but uneven Discipline + Desire, very little on American Tragic can truly be described as goth. It's goth-lite at best, and that only applies to a few songs. And the lyrics, while generally dark, are too personal, emotionally direct, and lovelorn to be goth. They really seem to be honing in on a mid-to-late-80s "new wave/alt rock" sound that sits somewhere between the Divinyls (think "Pleasure and Pain"), Flesh For Lulu ("I Go Crazy"), "Heartbreak Beat"-era Psychedelic Furs minus the production flash and horns, a more sober Gene Loves Jezebel, a smattering of post-goth March Violets, or Xmal Deutschland when they went commercial *after* Viva. Basically, it's as if they're trying to sound like a band on the soundtrack of an 80s John Hughes film. If anything, Fortune goes for the jugular with the pop angle, with big, palatable, widescreen hooks. The arena-sized choruses to "Deborah" and "I'm Not Going," for example, sound tailor-made for large lit-cell-phone-waving audiences. "I'm Not Going", in particular, could almost be a power ballad by an 80s metal band. At any rate, the album's high point is the run of three more guitar-driven songs on side one: "Lonely You," "I'm Not Going," and "Deborah." "I'm Not Going" features a darkly romantic, tastefully spare guitar riff played with a clean, reverb-heavy, rockabilly-esque tone, like Chris Isaac on downers. The haunting track slinks and builds in tension for maximum dramatic impact. The verses to the more upbeat but still brooding "Deborah" feature another attractively spare, emotionally resonant, clean guitar melody, recalling prime 80s-era Go-Betweens or the Bunnymen. The jangly guitars and relatively stripped down arrangements give these songs room to breathe and add to the sense of poignancy. After a strong side one, however, side two is a little weak. The songs aren't bad, they're just a bit flimsy or throwaway. Save for the final track (the rocking "Seraph," the only tune that harkens back stylistically to Discipline + Desire), side two is less guitar-driven and more synth-based and aims for a more mainstream pop vibe. "Glisten", for example, would sound right at home on a Lady Gaga album. "Severely Yours" and "At Any Moment" are similarly light, almost bubblegum pop, but actually suffer from the stripped back arrangements: a few smartly placed melodic flourishes really could have really elevated these new wave-lite tracks. My feelings on American Tragic are ambivalent. I appreciate the increased melodicism, and the sound of this record is a definite improvement: where D+D was like a thin, plastic-y squall, American Tragic generally sounds fuller, lusher. AT is more consistent, too; even with the weaker tracks it's still an easier album to listen to all the way through. But I wish Fortune had taken the melodicism and the album's darker moods further. It sounds like she's trying to straddle the line between something more refined and sophisticated than previous work, and something more base that would be suitable for top 40 radio. Fortune seems to be going for bigger, but not always smarter; simpler, but not always savvy; and some of the more over-the-top pop moments come at the expense of the band's artsy edge. I love smart pop as much as any record geek, but I fear that if Fortune keeps heading in this direction her music will lose that dark edge entirely, which would be a shame. (A note about the vinyl: my copy, which wasn't purchased through Amazon, has an annoying, audible, and persistent ticking noise on both sides. Collect Records may not be getting their LPs pressed at one of the better few remaining pressing plants. Wish I'd bought the CD instead).

Most great albums have 1-2 amazing songs, and if those tracks are good enough, a whole album can be good, and sometimes even great, on the graces of 1-2 amazing, dramaticly well-timed songs. American Tragic could have phoned it in after any one of these songs, like Deborah, Lonely You, or Goodbye Baby, but instead, every song feels very awake and in focus. That is not to say these tracks are undercooked, by a long shot. Take for example, Goodbye Baby; The guitar figure carries so much patient emotional intensity, that the vocals are able to coast in a middle ground for most of the song. That would have been enough for most bands, except partway through the song the vocalist decides to double-down and give the guitar hook a run for it's money with a chorus of hard blown notes that effectively elevate the whole affair to absolutely mesmerizing ends. She has an incredibly crafty way of rephrasing a single vocal passage, so it's the same thing said slightly different, whereby solidifying the memorability tremendously. There is no better example than on "Deborah," where she simply collected together a few pronunciations of that name, for the chorus, but the result is as catchy as any great pop vocalist from the 80's. The textures in this album are a blast to try to pin to an era. They seem to have one foot firmly planted in 80's pop, with the other foot just as firmly planted in golden-era 90's alt rock. For many bands today, doing either of those recognizably, could justify their whole career, but it often feel fake, like the garbage Neon Trees masquerade as "retro," but this is not some kind of gimmicky veneer for Wax Idols. Just look at a live clip of these people on Youtube; They are grown-up seasoned musicians who studied very well, the artists they love, as seemingly detached from eras entirely. They actually know about songwriting. They don't just do it, but they do it with a crafty eye for detail. So, while this new producer may have been the force that helped push them the extra mile required to reach this glorious plateau, they are there now. Wax Idols have arrived, like a storm shot through with beams of bleak light, and spewing lightning out of every crevice. This is a modest, yet detail-oriented work, of patient players with an absolute mastery of when you give, and when to retract. The hooks are mean, and the air is clean, but there is something very sinister in the ice cold glare of their approach on American Tragic. If you like Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Clan of Xymox, The Cure, Interpol, U.S. Girls, Siouxie and the Banshees, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Dead Weather, Mazzy Star...any sort of 80's/90's minimal guitar and ice cold female singer...this is really it. You won't even need to hear all of it to be convinced, but you should. This is the most surprising and exciting release of the year so far.