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Some Say Leland’s sophomore album surprises with its subtlety, full of gorgeous tunes and wistful narratives that flow with an easy but unsettled beauty. Despite the release of 2005’s Kings, Bishops, and Pawns, the self-released Fifty Miles Into the Main feels much more like their proper introduction. Since relocating to Austin from Nacogdoches, ssL foundation Dan Grissom has integrated himself into the new local lo-fi roots scene that has sprung up around the Secret Shows, not only with Some Say Leland, but also solo and with the McMercy Family Band. What separates Some Say Leland from those other groups, however, is the quality of the album and intricacy of Grissom’s songwriting, which forgoes the ribald and wild enthusiasm of his contemporaries for more contemplative and controlled ballads. Likewise, Grissom’s solo album from last year, What Was, was promising, but also rushed and somewhat haphazard, so Fifty Miles feels like a true representation of his talent given the tools and time to have it properly developed.
The album is broken by short instrumental and ambient interludes, which flow within the sequencing and help emphasize the actual songs, but also at times become somewhat distracting. The onomatopoeic “Bgrrsh” crashes the album’s opening, before sliding into the banjo tracked excellence of “The Ocean Was No More.” Grissom often sounds like Andrew Bird in his gentle delivery and quickly-paced phrasing, as well as his somewhat cryptic narrative style. “I was looking at you while you were looking at me, wondering why I see the things I see,” he opens on the song, before letting it slide from the personal into an odd and intriguing allegory of a woman sailing across the ocean on a raft of paper plates.
That opening line also sets up the theme that seems to run throughout Fifty Miles, the grasping at the unseen and forsaken, and the illusions between perception and reality. In this way, the instrumental interjections provide a hypnotic lull that seems to dip below a conscious surface to reveal glimpses of the other side, especially the eerie ambience of “Spool” and “The Promise of Dust.” At times it’s a dark vision, as with eerie dissonance behind the ominously calm drawl of “Devil’s Juicebox,” accented by the mourning, muted horn. “What do you see when you close your eyes?” Grissom ponders in the song, with the dream of the devil tempting murder juxtaposed against the waking dusty sunlight. Still, the song ends “And I held my head. And I closed my eyes,” suggesting that there is no resolution between the dream and reality.
“The Hunchback” likewise gestures towards the miracles of the unseen. Dreams continually operate as either escape and torment, but always as half-acknowledged realizations, even in their absence. The beautiful and tender “Porcelain (Potacha)” opens “I awoke from a dreamless night with a train in my head. I thought I was dead. I thought you were gone.” The songs hover in that balance of waking and slumber, the brief fleeting moments of uncertainty drawn out and explored. Reality still breaks in, as on the defiant New Orleans dirge of “The City is Flooding,” and even in the urge to escape and recreate, epitomized with the fantastic dislocation of “No More Cars.”
The album closes, appropriately enough, with “Found Myself Lost,” a nine-and-a-half minute ode to resignation, or at least acceptance. By the end’s solemn declaration of “I don’t need your help, I don’t need you around for me to call upon. I am alone. I like to be alone. So leave me alone,” followed by three minutes of a fading melodic drone, the conclusion is feigned at best. We’re still locked inside the contemplative ambiguity of Grissom’s world, but now left there alone. Yet it may still be the necessary move forward, as unsatisfying as it is, especially when put in context of songs like the album’s centerpiece, “Thread,” which under a pounding rhythm and disjointed movements, breaks down with the single line “I found your memory under my bed in a box full of pictures and thread.” Fifty Miles is an often heavy and unsettling journey, attempting to both excavate and bury, but it’s a testament to Grissom’s songwriting that he crafts the album with such subtlety and mesmerizing narrative to draw the listener through and want to head into the breach again.
Websites:
www.somesayleland.com
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