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Sorry old elementary school adage, but sometimes you can judge books by their cover, or in this case, an album. The cover for Ola Podrida’s Belly of the Lion, with its silhouetted figure half standing out in the waning sunlight, half blending into the flat Texas landscape, suggests a number of the isolating themes and sharp dynamics held within these otherwise soft layers of instruments and nonthreatening vocals. It’s a fitting image, too, as Ola Podrida’s sophomore album and debut on local label Western Vinyl also presents the return of David Wingo to Texas after time the songwriter spent in New York.
Wingo builds the album on subtle but solid foundations of multiple instrument tracks. A lingering reverb and unidentifiable moan of noise gives the impression of an old country house at dusk, particles of dust from the peeling wallpaper hanging in the air throughout, a very unobtrusive but calming scene. As Wingo is more prominently known as a film soundtrack composer, it’s no doubt that each song, even in its backdrop is charged with a sense of indescribable emotion. And while these static feelings are commendable, they hardly represent the talent of the album.
For that, we turn to the dynamic tension in both the music and lyrics that punctuates the album’s slow-churning ether (or whatever we’re calling guitar feedback these days). For a lyrical example, turn to “Your Father’s Basement,” which pulls out all the coming-of-age stops in a story of two young boys prowling a basement for various vices their father has left behind. The words are befitting of the attitude, very honest and direct: “If we find the booze maybe your sister’s friends would wanna come hang out man, how about that?” Though the song lacks any new insights into the teenage mind, the lyrics stand out nicely against the rest of the album, resonating in a similar sense of aloneness, here one that can only be caused by the unique transition into manhood.
Musically Wingo is at his best when contorting his assumed backdrop into a tense entanglement of sounds that unwind in the most melodic fashion. Looking at “Donkey,” spacious strummed chords are overpowered by Wingo’s increasingly dire vocals, singing “We yelled our names over the noise, we saved the girls and drowned the boys.” Eventually the buildup unravels into any number of instruments, all conducted by Wingo’s vocal yearnings. Though this tension and release can be accomplished through single instruments, here it’s the collective backdrop of instruments that follow Wingo’s voice, somehow making it all the more effective.
While there are many similar songs highlighting both that same tension and backdrop of aloneness — see the excellent sparrow imagery on “Roomfull of Sparrows” or the music of the closer “This Old World” — there are other songs that simply lack any real punch to them. “Monday Morning” never seems to pick up any drive, and “Lakes of Wine,” despite some excellent sexually charged lyrics about skinny dipping in wine, fails to deliver the same musical tension.
Yet when the album is able to create that musical tension to compliment the lyrics, Wingo translates the qualities of a good soundtrack into the music here, shaping a malleable feeling created by seemingly unobtrusive background music into dynamic themes. Those dynamic themes and their lonely surroundings are the same feeling we find on the telltale cover, and naturally, most good music in general.
Websites:
http://olapodrida.com
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