Cutter lays the smack down and establishes himself as the more mature, level headed reviewer in this final leg of The Rip Tide dialectic. He also informs Brandon that if he may be more “hopeless” than “romantic,” which, I’ll be honest, kind of stung a little bit.
From: Cutter Davis
To: Brandon Hall
If closer, “Port of Call” doesn’t sweep you off your feet, you don’t have a soul. A brief, heart wrenching sample: “And you / You had hope for me now / I danced all around it somehow / Be fair to me / I may drift awhile”
He’s drifting, Brandon. Be fair to him for fuck’s sake!
And don’t get me started on the title track, which I already mentioned, but seriously, if these songs don’t move you, then “hopeless” really is the operative word in your cliched self-description. This album is pared down, and that seems to me a sign of maturity. If a simple melody and lyric are already beautiful, why deck it out in fancy accoutrements and flourishes? What do the songs on Flying Club Cup gain from having 15 or 20 parts a piece? They just get busy and crowded. They’re fun and beautiful, but I think The Rip Tide shows that his songs are fun and beautiful without the excess. They’re so finely crafted that you can leave the boxes of instruments in the garage and still find yourself awash in melancholy and heartache. Now how can you not love that?
As for The National, we all have our bands. That’s what makes music fun. And art and literature and film, for that matter. I really like The National, too. I’m always anxious to hear their next album and they’re selling out arenas now for a reason. But I also don’t geek out about them the way you do. Because what you say is true – The National sound like The National. They make really god damn good occasionally maudlin music about growing up and growing old in America. It doesn’t hurt that the Dessner brothers also write and perform music with Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. There’s some God’s honest talent in that band – though I don’t know I’ve ever gotten a blowjob from them, but hey, that’s your thing. Congrats, on that.
And I agree that Zach Condon’s vocal performance in that clip was egregious. But I think that’s less Condon’s problem, and more just a bad idea to have him sing alongside Matt Berninger. I mean, I wouldn’t expect Berninger to be able to do a knockout accompaniment of a Beirut song, either. And I sure as shit don’t imagine he can sing in any fashion beyond his own. That doesn’t make him a bad singer or less of an artist, it just means he probably shouldn’t team up with Condon any time soon.
I don’t think it’s fair, necessarily, to compare master painters to pop musicians either. You’re right about Sufjan Stevens. That guy really is a master. And Dali and Picasso were masters as well. But true masters of an art form are few and far between. It’s unfair and wrongheaded to demand that every great artist also have transcendental abilities to mimic every other great artist. If that were the case, you’d be excited about one or two musicians every 15 years. How lame would that be?
“Filled your glass with gin / Filled your heart with pride,”
Cutter
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