THE LONG WINTERS : THE WORST YOU CAN DO IS HARM

THE LONG WINTERS : THE WORST YOU CAN DO IS HARM

Give Me A Moment
Carparts
Samaritan
Mimi
Medicine Cabinet Pirate
Unsalted Butter
Government Loans
Scent Of Lime
Copernicus
Untitled

Label : Barsuk Records

Length : 43:53

Review (Pitchfork) : In a stunning move reflecting yet another shift in our nation's defense strategy, the Pentagon today unveiled plans to resuscitate a controversial weapons project that has been neglected for over a decade. "Ladies and gentleman, tomorrow's battles will not be fought on the ground, in the air, or even under the water, but will require entirely new military technology to be developed," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced in a press conference this morning. "To defend ourselves from the increasingly powerful forces of terrorism worldwide, we must turn to one of our country's most valuable resources: the supergroup." The American supergroup arsenal has been steadily dwindling in power since the late 1960s, when star-studded projects like CSNY and Blind Faith were used as a deterrent in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Further development of supergroup technology occurred during the Reagan Years, focusing mainly upon the Traveling Wilburys agenda. But recent reports have warned that these weapons lie mostly in a state of disrepair, with the majority of their components dead, fat, and/or balding. As such, the Pentagon has started from scratch by introducing entirely new designs. "Our first rollout in the new American Supergroup Program is the Long Winters," said Nick Person, Director of Supergroup Strategy for the Department of Defense, "a project being developed at a confidential location somewhere in the Northwestern United States. Many details of this operation are highly classified, but I've been authorized to tell you it centers around singer/songwriter John Roderick, and features members of the Posies, Built to Spill, Sunny Day Real Estate, Fountains of Wayne, and Death Cab for Cutie." Thomas Zimmermann, founder of the private organization Citizen Supergroup Monitor, notes that the announcement of the Long Winters reflects a profound shift in the military's use of its supergroup resources. "Recent attempts to develop new supergroup weaponry involved taking musicians from high-profile groups, like the embarrassing failure of the Phish/Primus/Police hybrid, Oysterhead. Researchers found that placing three or more egotistical, renowned musicians in a band creates a volatile mixture prone to excessive noodling and horrendously ineffective songwriting. The Long Winters project, by assembling its components from less popular but critically lauded bands, indicates a new direction for the Supergroup Program." An anonymous source from inside the Pentagon confirmed this analysis. "When Canada went public with the New Pornographers last year, it was a big embarrassment for the entire military. We'd always joked about Canada's seemingly negligible supergroup capabilities, laughing at the idea of the Canucks combining Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, and the bassist from Loverboy. But when the Canadians tapped into their surprisingly rich indie rock resources and released Mass Romantic, we were all caught off guard." Meanwhile, when pressed for information during a Pitchfork interview, Death Cab's Ben Gibbard refused to directly comment on rumors of his involvement in the Long Winters: "I've never met a lot of those people, we're not comrades or anything, we don't play music together." Despite this denial, inside sources have confirmed to this reporter that Mr. Gibbard plays drums on the album's radioactively catchy "Carparts," while bandmate Chris Walla lends his quirky production and keyboard skills throughout the album. The Worst You Can Do Is Harm is the name of the debut release from the Long Winters, and we feel it adequately reflects the considerable strengths of this new project," Mr. Person explained at today's press conference. "Rooted in the traditional American country-rock style of Wilco and Clem Snide, developers have also added a glaze of poppy harmonies and synthesizer melodies. With highly infectious songs like 'Government Loans' and 'Scent of Lime,' the album has more than enough firepower to keep the Axis of Evil states in line." However, some skeptics temper the government's optimism about the Long Winters agenda. "The album most definitely has its flaws," says Mr. Zimmermann. "Roderick's throaty nicotine vocals really wear thin over the course of ten tracks. 'Medicine Cabinet Pirate' and 'Unsalted Butter' are both good songs that run too long, and, well, 'Samaritan' and 'Copernicus' are just flat out duds. Generally, however, it's a strong first step for the revival of the Supergroup Program. I can't get 'Carparts' out of my frickin' head." But Zimmermann cautions, "Technically, the Long Winters are not so much a supergroup as a collection of Roderick's songs recorded with the assistance of his luminous friends in the indie rock world. By unconditionally labeling them a supergroup, it's as if the military were writing a highly conceptual, overly clever record review and needed to fudge the details slightly to make an album fit the idea." Nevertheless, the American Supergroup Program is once again a top priority of the Pentagon. "Searches of seized bunkers in Afghanistan show preliminary indications that al Qaeda has been developing their own supergroup, purchasing guitarists and drummers on the black market from former Soviet Republics," said Person. "In response, we are pursuing Dan the Automator for a high-ranking position in the supergroup developmental program, and trying to arrange a resource-sharing coalition with England. By 2003, we project a Thom Yorke/Del tha Funkee Homosapien/Will Oldham assembly will be ready for deployment to armed forces stationed around the world."

Review (Pop Matters) : You need only flip through the booklet to The Long Winters’ debut, The Worst You Can Do Is Harm, to realize that this is far from your normal pop release. Apart from the sumptuous design of the thick booklet, which is printed on very high quality paper and includes your usual lyrics, baby pictures, and photos of scenery, bandleader John Roderick opted to include several letters addressed to him, presumably from ex-lovers and friends. One of them begins “John: You are a world-class bullshitter. You say you’ve quit lying to your friends, so I’m left to wonder if I’m not your friend.” Another includes the vicious lines “What could I possibly feel for you when you made me choose between my survival or being affected by you. You pull me close, to dance with me or whisper in my ear — but have you noticed, John, that I haven’t danced with you for an eternity?” Ouch! Although one may question the motivation of anyone who chooses to air such personal missives in the booklet of their CD, there’s no question that these letters are a preparation for the harrowing emotional rollercoaster that is this disc. As mentioned above, The Long Winters is the latest project of a guy called John Roderick, whose resume includes previous membership in smartypants one-hit-wonders Harvey Danger, as well as his own band of several years ago, Western State Hurricanes. After dropping out of music altogether and walking across Europe, Roderick is back, and has assembled the Long Winters out of the ashes of several Seattle bands. However, The Worst You Can Do Is Harm was recorded before a live band had actually been assembled, and thus is purely a studio creation, bearing little relation to the live band that Roderick is currently fronting. This is noteworthy, because live, the Winters come across as a power-pop funhouse somewhere between Squeeze at their most buoyant and Elvis Costello at his most acidic, with some hints of such latter-day power pop acts as the Posies thrown in there for good measure. The Worst You Can Do Is Harm, however, is a much more subdued affair. Although a few tracks kick up a storm of squalling guitars and strange noises, much more typical of the album is the contemplative “Mimi” or the opening “Give Me a Moment”, an extremely downcast number with the chorus “Give me a moment, I’ve been away / And I’ve been out of my head.” The two unifying threads on Harm are Roderick’s strong, almost midwestern voice, (which bears a slight resemblance to Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, minus the flagrant melodrama, thank god) which is equally effective as a full-throated yell or a quiet croon; and Chris Walla’s inventive production. Anyone familiar with Death Cab for Cutie’s second record, We Have the Facts and We’re Votin’ Yes will immediately recognize Walla’s fingerprints all over this record. Although the warm analog nature of the production sometimes lends a slightly claustrophobic feel to the proceedings, it only serves to add to the emotional heft of Roderick’s songs. And what songs! Although it took a few listens to adjust to the record’s extreme melancholy (mainly because I was expecting a buoyant power-pop headnodder), it didn’t take long to appreciate this new direction. The aforementioned “Give Me a Moment” opens the record on an extremely downcast note, with some backwards guitar and a lo-fi drum loop that could have been lifted directly off a Death Cab B-side. Roderick’s creaky, worn-out voice enters the picture with the words “Living my summers out in a hotel / Finally found a moment to set a spell / Heard things at home were going astray / Won’t you give me a moment, I’ve been away.” The chorus only adds to the melancholy, and a two-minute long outro, which begins with a Crazy Horse-like guitar solo, and ends with the aforementioned drum loop and a tinkling piano, proves a deliciously disorienting way to end the song. “Carparts”, the record’s second song, shows us the much more accessible, power-pop side to Roderick’s muse. “I’m leaving you all of my carparts / I didn’t have the money or I would have gotten roses,” begins the song in a wonderfully confused fashion, with Roderick’s voice in full flower. “You put all your hope in my slim chance / I didn’t know I had,” sings Roderick in the chorus, and it’s one of the many times throughout the record that he seems to be apologizing for his own existence. In fact, this disc seems very much like Roderick’s way of wiping his personal slate clean. Although not all of these songs are necessarily autobiographical, it’s more than obvious that a good percentage of them are. When songwriters take pages of their diary and turn them into song, the results are usually more than a little bit queasy ?- however, Roderick is a skilled enough songwriter to turn his personal traumas and heartbreaks into universally appealing subject matter. Whether it’s the subtle tale of drug abuse related in “Medicine Cabinet Pirate” (“There’s a chance that no one would know / There’s a chance that it wouldn’t show . . . You were waiting for my luck to run out”) to the paranoia of “Samaritan (“I need to get the hell out of here / I’m sure the cops are on their way / Please forget my face”), Roderick is never too obvious nor too melodramatic. Although his lyrics are, more often than not, relatively vague, like the best songwriters, he uses his vocal delivery to imply additional meaning that his words merely hint at. Musically, the songs range in tone from the folky shuffle of “Samaritan” to the intense emoting of “Scent of Lime” (“It never rains enough to cool my fever / All it does is rain” to the atmospheric indie-pop of Mimi, which once again could be compared to the mellower moments of a Death Cab For Cutie record. Elsewhere, Jim Roth’s pedal steel snakes a path through “Government Loans”, providing one of the more elegiac atmospheres on the record. In the end, The Worst You Can Do Is Harm resolves itself as being quite comfortable with its identity as a difficult pop record. Roderick never comes across as too smart for his own good, and his lyrics, while quite witty at times, are also very plainspoken. Walla’s production can seem distracting at first, but this is only because the record truly takes multiple listens to appreciate and digest. While one’s first few listens might not provide too much headway into these complex gems,The Worst You Can Do Is Harm is one of those records that reveals a new twist every time you listen to it. Whether it’s the strong vocal hook of “Medicine Cabinet Pirate” (“I wanna be with you all the time”) to the beautiful delivery of the line “I had to get into you” on “Mimi”, there are dozens of perfect moments on this record that take awhile to uncover. They combine to make this one of the best pop records released thus far this year.