Third album of Lawrence Arms guitarist Chris
McCaughan’s (almost) solo project. Different from its predecessors, Neon Fiction is a quiet album that
invites you to follow what is also done in the lyrics: looking for beauty in
the margins.
Neon Fiction is a perfect example for why it’s almost
impossible to write about any kind of artistic output in an entirely objective
way. Whether it’s expectations, personal preference, or circumstances – you
barely ever look at anything in a vacuum. Even before I listened to the album,
I already had a feeling that I would like it. I really enjoyed its predecessor We Chase the Waves and Chris McCaughan’s
main band, The Lawrence Arms, is one of my favorite bands. Of course, that
always opens the door to big disappointments (cf. Mono), so every new CD by a
band/an artist I care about triggers a distinct combination of anticipation and
dread. That’s why sometimes I buy an album on the day it comes out, but then
end up waiting a couple of days before I actually listen to it. It took four
songs to confirm my pre-judgment. In “We drift eternal,” I thought I heard him
sing “We are the forgotten language, we are the Kessel Runs” and went “Fuck
yes, love this CD!” I couldn’t wait to tell people about it and was pretty
stoked until I looked in the booklet. That he actually sings “castle ruins”
certainly makes much more sense, but ultimately didn’t change my premature
evaluation of the album.
Musically,
it’s a departure from Sundowner’s first two albums. What started as just
another guy and his guitar side project had already developed towards the
inclusion of slower songs on We Chase the
Waves. Interestingly, the addition of drums (Lawrence Arms drummer Neil
Hennessy plays drums and bass on here) and electric guitar on Neon Fiction doesn’t mean that it gets
faster and louder – quite the opposite: some songs are very slow and sparsely
instrumented, almost coming to a standstill at times (for example “My Beautiful
Ruins” or “Origins”). While the album opener “Cemetery West” still has a
distinct Lawrence Arms feel (I know exactly where Brendan would have screamed
his background vocals), the waltzing “Grey on Grey” or songs like “City of
Embers” and “Wildfires” move in a new and different direction. For fans of old
Sundowner, the slowness and move away from the strumming-an-acoustic-guitar
style may come as a disappointment, but I think that the new approach works
quite well. It’s somewhere between slow Lawrence Arms and early Weakerthans.
Maybe I say
Weakerthans also because the line “I miss my feet traversing your geography”
(in the love song to Chicago, “My Beautiful Ruins”) immediately made me think
of John K. Samson. Here is a self-conscious and reflecting “poet of trash” with
an eye for the small and great tragedies/victories of our daily lives. He may
have “recycled lines like bottles and cans” but the result is quite amazing. Just
listen to “We Drift Eternal” (the one with the Kessel Run/castle ruins): the
juxtaposition of loneliness and the feeling of always moving on the edge of
defeat, on one side, and a life-affirming embracing of the cards you are dealt,
on the other, is delivered with a casualness and ease that is unique and that
Chris McCaughan pulls off better than most of his peers.
The result
is an album of quiet songs, introspection, observations in which we may
recognize ourselves, and encouragement. Even without the Kessel Run, I
continually find myself wanting to share the little pieces of wisdoms of Neon Fiction. That they are wrapped into
great sing-along tunes, makes Neon
Fiction quite irresistible: “I got no time for enemies, I am the maker of
my destiny. La-di-da-di-da.”
Sundowner on Facebook.
