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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Kid Dakota: So Pretty
Wednesday 16 October @ 10:10:55 |
 by P.J. Morel
Kid Dakota, the ongoing collaboration between local mainstays Darren Jackson, Chris McGuire, and producer Alex Oana, is back this week with a new album. Sorta. Of the eight tracks on So Pretty, being released on Low’s Chairkickers’ Music label, only three are new. They augment the five tracks that were previously released two years ago as the So Pretty EP; but they bring the total running time to over 46 minutes. Indeed, the newcomers are fairly epic compositions. They make for a good excuse to explore the guts of a very clever and original recording.
“Crossin’ Fingers,” “Bathroom,” and “The Overcoat” differ from their predecessors not in style but in scope, exploring the compositional possibilities of a very limited instrumental pallet. The songs on So Pretty consist, for the most part, of guitars, drums, and vocals. That’s supplemented with restrained use of bass, keyboards, and a few percussion instruments. Those elements are rarely layered on top of each other, as in conventional pop songs, but rather replace one another, the accompaniment evolving over the course of a song. The vocal is always center stage, with the instruments providing dramatic counterpoint. The result is a very “composed” feeling, not unlike some of Brian Wilson’s last work with the Beach Boys.
And yet you could hardly find two artists more different in tone. So Pretty evokes a daunting landscape. Although there are some clear lyrical cues —the reference to the Black Hills in “The Overcoat,” for one—it would be hard to hear these tracks without imagining rough, rustuc spaces. The production that Jackson and Oana set up is highly imagistic. Guitars crunch along softly like gravel underfoot. The vocals are bone-dry, as though sung in an open space, without walls to echo from. In a moment, the calm is shattered by the thunder crack of McGuire’s snare drum. On other recordings, drums and guitars are just a rhythmic bed for the vocal melody. On So Pretty they’re the ominous clouds and vaulting trees framing Jackson’s confessional vocal.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about So Pretty is the way it assumes an entirely different character with headphones on, when the sonic details really come into focus. There’s a queer sort of life in these desolate tracks, the very sounds of the instruments throwing off sparks of memory. On “Smokestack,” the throb of a low guitar chord excites the beaded snares on McGuire’s drum kit into motion, producing a ghostly rattle. Jackson sucks in his breath to start a phrase, and you see him in your mind’s eye, like he’s summoning the strength to sing the next line. On other recordings, these sonic elements would have been scrupulously removed in the mixing process; here they are part of the texture of the recording.
“We like to capture that,” says Jackson of the literal, squeaks-and-all aesthetic. “Chris is very diligent about it—to make sure it sounds like people playing in a room.” It’s an attitude that belies the very modern methods used to put the album together. Jackson and Oana used hard-disc recording systems to piece together all of the elements, with the new songs using upwards of 40 instrument tracks. “We wanted to keep all that’s human about it in there—in Protools you can take all of that out really easily.”
The thunderous minor-key sound of these tracks can get a bit wooden after a half hour of continuous listening—and that’s certainly the biggest shortcoming of the album—but track-by-track, the inventiveness with which Jackson imbues these skeletal compositions is remarkable. The smallest elements come to define a song, and you have to listen to them very carefully, the way you look at an Ansel Adams photograph: the fine naturalistic detail is almost overwhelming.
Kid Dakota plays twice this week: first, this Thurs., Oct. 17, at Lee’s Liquor Lounge, with Mountain Goats and Jack Norton. 9 p.m.$5. 21+. 101 Glenwood, Mpls. 612-338-9491. And Sun., Oct. 20, in the Clown Lounge at the Turf Club. 10 p.m. $5. 21+. 1601 University Ave, St. Paul. 651-647-0486.
Download an mp3 of Kid Dakota's The Overcoat.
You can find out more about Kid Dakota on their official website.
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