Austin Sound

Sara Beck’s songwriting always has a certain amount of disarming charm – her simple yet powerful voice, a generally smooth folk-rock sound and the seemingly innocent subject matter that revels in the mundane details of the everyday make her songs, on the surface, seem like fairly standard KGSR drive-time material. But then that’s the intriguing beauty of Pink Nasty. As her debut Mule School taught us, that elegant simplicity comes with a biting, often sardonic edge that is suggested by her alias. On Mold the Gold, Pink Nasty’s second album, Beck further improves on that formula even as it moves to the more rock side of her folk influences. But while the songs on the album certainly seem to be representative a more mature songcraft, Mold the Gold often plays it a bit too safe. There are some truly great moments on the album that show Beck at her best, but the blatantly charming irreverence of songs like “What the Fuck” that marked her debut have, for better or worse, grown up into to more complex emotions and arrangements that seem to somewhat subdue her brazenness.

Beck’s vocals can be so smooth as to seem innocuous, which is a double-edged sword here. When she adds some distortion to her voice and power to the music, as with “Away Message” and “Napoleon Complex,” the result is unsettling in a productively disruptive manner. And the album never allows itself to settle too comfortably, interjecting idiosyncratic bursts like “Street Smart” or abrupt, sometimes playful, musical shifts on songs like “Take It Back” and “Danny” that serve to keep the album as a whole interesting. Individually, however, many of the songs could easily slip by without impact – the lilting “Golden Smoke,” the power-poppy “Dirty Soap” or even the sultry opener “I Don’t Know” threaten to be subjugated by the more traditional or straightforward sound even as their differing styles attest to Beck’s virtuosity.

The song that is the most problematic in this manner is “BTK Blues.” Easily the most exceptional track on the album, the song seems unassuming in its blasé young-adult suburban boredom. The schoolgirlish lines like “It’s early evening, I guess I’m headed back home / There’s no where else to go” and “Do I look the same? / Have I put on some weight? / From the day to day / Fast food and binge drinking” are presented as blankly as the unconcern that “There’s a killer on the loose and I’m not even phased / He wouldn’t want me anyways.” The song is brilliant in its tortured ennui that overshadows even the threat of the stalking BTK serial killer, and the eerie male chant of “It’s dark now, you should head home,” partly supplied by Will Oldham, jarringly reveals the brutality that always seems just under the surface of Beck’s songs. But that moment in the song is representative of the album as a whole – like the young female, the listener could easily get blinded by the songs’ seeming simplicity and mundaneness and dismiss the darker intensity circling just behind the tunes. So even though this is a characteristic facet of Beck’s expertly understated songwriting, the concern is that it can be so easily overlooked. (Interestingly enough, it’s also the exact opposite problem of her brother Black Nasty’s over-the-top brashness).

Oldham’s contributions on the album help counter this effect to a large degree. His raspy, irregular vocals work well in contrast to Beck’s to expose the contours of both. Closer “Don’t Ever Change” is a remarkable duet between the two that back-and-forths through the tiredness of love. Sentiments like “Please don’t shower, deodorant stains on your back” and “Please don’t wear any makeup, please baby won’t you shut the fuck up – because you know that I love you” are actually incredibly touching and poignant in their reality and groundedness. “Danny” also works similarly, and Beck is at her most direct and indignant in the song as well.

For a sophomore album, Mold the Gold shows an impressive growth for Beck. But its strength - the subtlety of the lyrics and emotion – is also its greatest drawback. If Pink Nasty can manage to better balance all the elements at play in her songwriting – and Mold the Gold certainly moves more in that direction – then there really may be no limit to what she can accomplish.

Websites:
www.pinknasty.net
Myspace