Joan of Arc - How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More?
(Jade Tree)
Last years' The Gap was on the top of my best albums of 2000 list, and remains my favorite
Joan of Arc album to date. And since they have decided to call it quits with Joan of Arc
so they can re-form Cap'n Jazz under the name The Owls, I guess this is their swan song
release.
It seems like every album this year is just left over tracks from a previous album,
Radiohead did it, Ida did it, and now Joan of Arc did it. Originally the songs on How
Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More? were meant to be included with the songs on The Gap
to form a double album, but as the session went on, the band decided to just finish the
album and come back to finish up the rest of the songs.
Since the songs for How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More? were finished and compiled
once the band had decided to "call it a day," the album title, song titles, and even the
songs themselves seem to be ripe with self-conscious references to the life and ending
of a band.
Where previous Joan of Arc albums were a mix of pop songs, deconstructed pop songs, and
collages of electronic noise blending them all together, on How Can Any Thing So Little
Be Any More? the band expands their sound, replacing the electronic experiments with more
drone and ambient "songs." "Leaving Needn't Take Long," "My Fight is Necessary," and "I'll
Show You, I'll Show You All" use pulsating organ and keyboard soundscapes, blurry washes of
guitar, looped and delayed guitar lines, and distorted low-end rumbling to fade in and out
the album, and break up the songs.
"Most at Home in Motels" and "My Cause is Noble and Just" are the more "song" oriented
tracks on the album where Joan of Arc follow their traditional pattern of writing pop
songs and then destroying them. However, the way they go about deconstructing their
songs on How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More? isn't quite as aurally pleasing as
it normally is. On "Most at Home in Motels," instead of using studio editing and
electronic fuckery to foil the song, they add a piano melody that randomly comes
in and out of the song out of rhythm in all the wrong places, leaving the listener
with a queasy, sea-sick feeling by the end. In "My Cause is Noble and Just," what
sounds like a big guitar mess up is actually used as part of the main guitar line,
which, while that's an interesting idea, it's appeal is limited once you have heard
it once.
However, while these songs don't fully succeed in continuing Joan of Arc's pattern
of beautifully deconstructed pop songs, they are still good songs. And, where they
failed, songs like "Ne Mosquitoes Pass" and "I'll Show You, I'll Show You All" more than
make up for said failure by being some of Joan of Arcs best songs to date. And while
the release is far from perfect, it is a good send off to a great band.
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