The Great Depression - Unconscious Pilot
(Fire)
Reviewing the UK debut release of a US band may seem a bit strange but such are the twists and turns of fortune and promos. The Great Depression are from Minneapolis, which has produced enough good music over time that there is always hope—I figure we still need at least one more Prince-styled mad genius from there to offset the unfortunate Soul Asylum problem, admittedly.
Perhaps more to the point, the Great Depression are a bit like Toto—sort of. No "Rosanna" or "Africa" or "Hold the Line" here mind you, it's that the group are the semi-house band for Pachyderm Studios and have played on enough records over the moons. So when a studio house band actually goes ahead and releases an album that's worthwhile, maybe the feeling is less Porcaro brothers than Booker T and the MGs. But the music on Unconscious Pilot is for the most part extremely, beautifully tasteful fragile psych smokiness, caught somewhere between the Doors' rainy nights, shoegaze's calmer drone gaze (say Slowdive at their most reflective or the like, somewhere between Souvlaki and Pygmalion) and a bit of spikier energy here and there to offset that in turn. Meanwhile, the shimmering early-morning-dawn of "A Daring Tale of Escape" and "Ethansled" are simply grand. "Meet the Habsburgs," with its floating instrumental lope sliding into a piano coda, gets a spot-on opposite with the horn-laden swinging pop of "The Sargasso Sea," even as the melancholy hangs on but in a breezy, merrily throwaway setting. Lead singer Todd Casper underplays his vocals, slipping them into the mix in classic dreampop fashion, but they're never quite just another instrument—when he's finally perfectly audible on "Violent Goodbyes," it's a nice surprise. May not set your world on fire per se but damn if this didn't sneak up on me in the end and win me over through and through.
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