Austin Sound

Raised on steady diet of pre-Ghost Is Born Wilco and pretty much anything Ryan Adams has recorded, Wiretree’s sophomore LP, Luck, is a collage of turn-of-the-millennium alt-country rock and pop. Kevin Peroni, who plays the majority of the instrumentation on Luck, sings with hushed urgency to a tuneful track list full of pop idiom and refined rock and roll.

Luck, in many ways, defines the ideal pop sound. Each song, carefully crafted by Peroni, begins in verses that build into choruses while he delicately intones over piano and guitar rock. And you know when the chorus has arrived because the voice takes on a sort metallic tone as it tries to reach those elevated, repeat-worthy melodies, the cymbals come crashing in, and a distorted guitar rings out over the acoustic rhythm. Peroni’s equation-like approach to his songwriting and instrumentation might seem a bit elementary on paper, but for the most part it makes for a quite enjoyable record.

Ultimately, Wiretree is a band geared to write and produce mainstream pop with catchy four chord progressions and ambiguous lines about the “heart”. The dilemma here is that the music and lyrics, at moments, play like contriving reproductions of previous pop endeavors. Somehow, though, Peroni’s musical tact inevitably gets us to go along with it, putting our “this sounds just like that part in that song by…” to rest. For instance, take the amiable chorus to “Back in Town”: “letting go is the hardest part”. Now, I could name a handful of songs that use those same words in their respective choruses, but something about Peroni’s sly way of getting us there, ushering us in the back way by his melodic enterprising in the verses, helps to make his unintentional copycatting a forgivable offense.

The deceptively sinister “Satellite Song” starts off, “I believe the world’s ending on a Sunday”, which sounds, in many ways, to be the antithesis of anything “luck”. It’s darker overtones are much in contrast to the rest of the album’s decidedly AM rock and gives the album a complete musical gestalt. Channeling late 90s alt rock a la Jimmy Eat World (yes, Jimmy Eat World), the jangly torment of “Satellite Song” swings high on the album’s emotional scope with anxious notions about a collapsing romance during the apocalypse. The sister track to “Satellite Song”, “Information,” meanwhile, basks in Peroni’s mainstream malaise but struggles to maintain the same emotional depth.

The alt-country gem “Luck” is evidence of Peroni’s panache for simplistic excellence. Pulsing electric keys add background to what is really just acoustic and voice while Peroni sings an unforgettable ascending melody that immediately pulls at the heartstrings.

Wiretree seems most successful on Luck when their mixing up their tone and keeping the listener from getting complacent on track after track of understated pop decadence, drawing the ear in — or when Peroni nails it. For all its pastiche, Luck is an endurably listenable album for anyone who has appreciated the subtle beauty of melodies over catchy pop tunes.

Websites:
http://wiretreemusic.com
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