Everyday there is another album being released by a band striving to be different, but somewhere in the process something goes wrong. Sometimes a band works so hard to be different that the result instead of being homogenous and boring, is so different that it is inaccessible. Sometimes the idea sounds great on paper, but doesn’t come out as planned. And then there is the blatantly obvious: the idea is just plain
bad.
Someday This Could All Be Yours falls under the rare group of albums that have ideas that
just shouldn’t work, but somehow, they do. Sort of a true “that’s so crazy, it just might work” type situation.
But what makes
Someday This Could All Be Yours so different? Sure, there are random sound samples and utilization of the piano and synthesizer, but that’s all been done before.
The first thing an ordinary listener will notice about
Someday This Could All Be Yours is that it is chockfull of dissonance. Every song is layered in every possible way, and none of the separate layers sound like they should go together. Unwarranted flats that break the rules in any normal pop songwriter’s playbook plague the album. This dissonance will cause the average pop (actually any listener not familiar with The Paper Chase) listener to raise one eyebrow disconcertedly. This said dissonance gives the album a very demented mood that suits the lyrical content present throughout.
Vocally, John Congleton sounds like a more raw version of The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle. He rambles through
Someday This Could All Be Yours with less precision than one would expect of a pop front man, often missing (or what one would expect to be the next) notes by half-steps in his constricted vocalization. But perhaps the strangest aspect of the music, is that as brilliantly off-kilter as it sounds, it’s catchy, though with choruses like
no one’s gonna save you / no one’s gonna save you the lyrics aren’t exactly suitable for a sing-along. The lyrics are mostly depressing, contrary to the way they are presented, but fitting for the universal sound of the album. Even the rhyming is as rough around the edges as they come, adding to the central theme of uneasiness. Often words will be rhymed with the same word, and when there is an actual rhyme…it seems too soon or displaced.
As a whole, all of the layers are pseudo-cohesive, and make for a odd experience, but the experience is one worth having. If out of the ordinary is not your cup of tea this isn’t for you, then don’t bother picking this up, but if you’re ever in the mood for an exotic, new style of indie-pop,
Someday This Could All Be Yours should be added to your library immediately.
