Chris Wollard and the Ship Thieves: "Canyons"

Imagine the following situation: you went out last night, talked to some old friends, got a little too drunk and a little too nostalgic. You said some stupid things that pissed off your girlfriend and wake up the next day with a mixture of residual nostalgia and regret but also that elated feeling of knowing that you had an absolute blast last night. It’s too early to get up but the sun’s out and you have the day off. You step outside to take a walk and let the morning breeze clear your mind. You’ll meet your friends later. Life is good. 

Listen to “Never have time” on Canyons – and you’ll have the perfect soundtrack. The music, the lyrics, and Chris Wollard’s voice all carry the mixture of melancholia, regret, and optimism that comes with days like the one above. It’s what I like about his songs in Hot Water Music (his main band in which he shares singing and songwriting duties with Chuck Ragan) and it’s what shines through in the best songs on Canyons.

Initially, I was turned off by the same thing that turned me off of some Chris’s songs on Exister, Hot Water Music’s most recent album: “Poison Friends” and “Sick sick love” – like “Boy, you’re gonna hurt someone” on Exister – are kind of repetitive both lyrically and musically. Especially “Sick sick love” feels like it started off as a jam during practice sessions and ended up with some last-minute vocals to put it on the album. Once you make it past these setbacks, though, you’ll find an album that sounds more like band effort than their previous CD (which was, I guess, more or less a solo album) and that is distinctly different not only from Hot Water Music but also from the many many punkrocker-gone-acoustic releases that pop up everywhere.

While there are some melodies that are recycled from Hot Water Music (“Heavy Rolling Thunder,” for example, sounds a lot like “Seein’ Diamonds”) and some typical Chris-Wollard-chord-sequences, this is all in all quite different from HWM. Whereas HWM have always been progressive in their sound and approach, the Ship Thieves are retrospective. You’ll hear a little bit of Neil Young, some Dylan, and many other influences. Their music is nothing new, but that’s exactly the point. Compared to Hot Water Music, they are more of a bar band – with more room for solos and jamming, here to rock while you have a good time and a couple of beers.  The opener, “Dream in my head,” for example, is the kind of Southern punk’n’roll you’d hear at, well, Egan’s in Tuscaloosa, AL on a Friday night.

I am glad that he is neither over-countrifying his songs or going down the acoustic path that Chuck Ragan and countless others have followed. There is only one dude-with-an-acoustic-guitar song on Canyons:  “Lonely Days,” which starts with handclaps and turns into a raspy-voiced melancholy folk song that could also appear on Ben Nichols’s “The Last Pale Light in the West” EP. Actually, forget what I just said: I wouldn’t mind a whole Chris Wollard acoustic album if the songs are that good. Two other standout tracks for me are the two album closers, “Never have time” and “Modern Faith”: they are not really HWM material and might otherwise have gone unpublished, so I am really glad that Chris Wollard found an additional outlet with the Ship Thieves. Although it suffers from a couple of somewhat unexciting songs, Canyons shows Chris Wollard’s knack for writing unpretentious and honest songs that are melancholy and uplifting at the same time: songs about regret, about getting lost, about not finding the time to do what we really want – but at the same time about the redeeming power of love and friendship.


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Chris Wollard on No Idea Records

Mono: "For My Parents"

I saw Mono in Nuremberg a couple of weeks ago and it was awesome. Although the songs got a little repetitive after a while, it was very impressive to see them build their walls of sound and losing themselves in their music – especially their guitarist Taka. A girl standing next to me was so moved she cried during their first song. The Japanese instrumental band has always been leaning a bit more towards pathos than comparable bands such as Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor – and with the new album entitled For My Parents and songs like “Nostalgia” or “Dream Odyssey” it’s pretty clear that their music is still meant to evoke certain emotions. Unfortunately, my emotional response to their new CD is comparable to when I saw Episode I for the first time.

I love the old Star Wars movies and had very high hopes for Episode I. When I finally got to see it, I didn’t know what to say. I liked some stuff, but there were also a whole lot of things that I didn’t like (questionable plot and character decisions, fart jokes, etc.). I tried to explain to myself what was good about it, I defended it in discussions with friends, I watched it again to see if I would like it better. I really, really wanted to like it … but it wouldn’t quite let me. 

With the new Mono CD, there was probably the same feeling of really wanting to like it. After my first listen, I didn’t know what to say. I tried to explain to myself what was good about it, I defended it in discussions with friends, I listened to it again and again to see if I would like it better. Yes, there are some classic Mono elements on For My Parents – but, unfortunately, there is also a lot of stuff that just doesn’t feel right

For example: the use of strings, which has grown over the past few albums to a full-blown orchestra on this one (like on their 2010 live album with the Wordless Music Orchestra). While it used to organically blend in, it is just too much now. Quite often the band disappears behind the orchestra or the strings ruin a part that would otherwise have been nice. Even more than before, their music sounds like the soundtrack to a movie – a movie that consists entirely of important, emotional, fateful scenes. A movie in which there is nothing subtle or unimportant – everything is big, tragic, triumphant, and in-your-face epic. Some of For My Parents is so overblown, bombastic, and sugarcoated, I imagine it would make John Williams blush.

Also: after a while the songs start sounding the same. Melodies in the songs on the second half sound strangely familiar and the fact that they always use the same strategy becomes painfully obvious: quiet guitar melody, crescendo, guitar tremolo when it gets louder. And while that worked very well on previous albums, on this one it’s too repetitive, too sweet, and the melodies don’t really touch me.

Admittedly, it’s not all bad. There are still elements that remind me of why I like their previous CDs so much. Under the layers of over-orchestration, there are some nice melodies and hidden gems. In the best moments, their music has a calming and otherworldly feel (some parts of the first two songs remind me of the soundtrack to Fable, which I like a lot) and a song title like “Dream Odyssey” describes quite well where Mono’s music can take you if you let it.

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that the new Star Wars movies will never mean the same to me as the old ones. I guess it was a learning experience. I’m not going to defend something just because I liked it in the past. So… I don’t really like this CD. The bottom line is that I feel like I have to explain to myself why I like it. It’s not the kind of CD that requires some effort to get to know or appreciate (like when you listen to Converge for the first time) – it’s too much surface for that. Without the orchestra, it would have been much better, although still weaker than their previous output. Let’s hope they will take a step back again. I don’t want the next one to remind me of Episode II.


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