The New Year - Newness Ends
(Touch and Go)
There's a feeling that runs throughout the Kadane brothers' new
album Newness Ends that singer Matt Kadane is just not
comfortable in his own skin. While that feeling was always a
part of Bedhead's music, it was never expressed so concretely
and so expressively as in the songs of The New Year. It is these
concrete emotions that make The New Year's debut album as
outstanding as anything in Bedhead's discography.
Bedhead's lyrics were almost always open to interpretation.
Kadane often seemed to be singing stream of consciousness,
putting together random thoughts with only the goal of
expressing a general image or state of mind without any
specific, detailed meaning. Such is the case of most slowcore
music; perhaps grand, sweeping musical brushstrokes are just
best matched to broad lyrical brushstrokes. In The New Year,
however, Kadane is no longer limited to the slowcore formula;
he tells you exactly how he feels.
It is the abandonment of these slowcore clichés that
separates The New Year from Bedhead. While foundationally quite
different than its predecessor, taking the form of a two guitar
standard rock and roll band instead of a three guitar slowcore
"quietest loud band in the world," The New Year is quite obviously
from the same musicians. The clean and pure sound, the hypnotic
repetition, the slight twang, and the general melancholic aura of
Bedhead are all present and accounted for. What is different is
the context. The majestic slowcore build or the minutes-long
slowcore repetition are muted in the context of a true rock and roll
band; phrases still repeat and build, the increments and durations
are just smaller. While Bedhead brings you to wide open spaces,
The New Year brings you to cramped, tiny ones like a vacant
club or a corner of the mind.
The muted dynamics do not affect the power or quality of the music
as it simply allows more space for other song elements like lyrics and
rock guitar. Songs like "Reconstruction" and "The Block That Doesn't Exist"
equal anything the Kadanes have done before. In "Reconstruction," Kadane
expresses his trepidation in starting over again and forming a new
band as he "can't make decisions anymore," and he finds his "guitar smells
bittersweet." "Reconstruction" is the best example of "that build"
on this album as, after the vocals have ended, the two guitars play
counter-melodies that grow in volume and aggressiveness--somehow
all fit into a three minute song. "The Block That Doesn't Exist"
also does a great job of combining two disparate guitar parts as
one guitar chugs and rocks as the other plays a slow, sparse
melody. Kadane sings of some suburban lot where he might better belong
as he finds himself past 4 "cat-years" old (and still doing the same
things he did when he was 3 cat-years old).
This is the theme of the album. With the brothers growing older but
still doing the same things they did 5 to 10 years ago and, in fact,
restarting the cycle by forming this new band, they are increasingly
uncomfortable with their role as slowcore idols. Regret is expressed
for having even started music in the first place. This sense of worry and
malaise is expressed through compact rock and roll songs that
showcase all of the elements of Bedhead's music that made them great
while still being something new and different. If you are able to
separate your views of Bedhead from listening to this new band that happens
to include members of Bedhead, you will find that Newness Ends is an
outstanding, albeit compact, album--no doubt to be one of the best of the
year.
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