Plumbiferous Media

After play­ing with NYC group Black Dice, artist and musi­cian Sebas­t­ian Blanck began record­ing on his own, and Tuesday’s Alibi Coast is his first solo album. With Alibi Coast, Blanck com­bines instru­men­tal expe­ri­ence from Black Dice along with con­tri­bu­tions from sev­eral vocal­ists to cre­ate an inter­est­ing, though not entirely unique, album. But unique­ness aside, when Alibi Coast works well, it’s cer­tainly a plea­sure to lis­ten to. The prob­lem, then, is that the same idea can only be a plea­sure for so long.

As far as musi­cian­ship goes, the instru­men­tals of Alibi Coast have quite a bit of tech­ni­cal prowess. Every­thing is excel­lent from a purely sci­en­tific stand­point, cre­at­ing an overly solid, utterly relaxed sound that is actu­ally some­what over­whelm­ing. The slightly more pro­nounced bass of “Empire of the Free” is an excel­lent addi­tion to the track, adding per­fectly to the tone of the song. The gui­tar flirts expertly with near-unison on “Black Sanded Beach,” pro­ceed­ing into a fit­ting solo, and, though in an utterly sub­tle man­ner, is the defin­ing voice of “Tum­bling Skies,” serv­ing to clearly define it as a track entirely unlike the pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent tracks, as well as, arguably, the best track on Alibi Coast.

But look­ing into “Tum­bling Skies“‘s suc­cess more care­fully, it’s prob­a­bly not exactly amaz­ing for Alibi Coast that one of the best tracks is unlike any of the oth­ers. For the most part, as fit­ting and well crafted as the sounds of Alibi Coast may be, they’re so drowned in their relax­ing sound that they often sound lack­ing any sort of pas­sion. There’s a dif­fer­ence between cre­at­ing a relaxed album and one almost entirely devoid of energy. It does get bet­ter as it pro­gresses, to a degree, but it’s a bad sign that the sec­ond track, “Noth­ing Left to Lose,” can have an upbeat tempo and active drum line and still sound com­pletely tir­ing and dull.

Blanck is joined by a num­ber of vocal­ists through Alibi Coast, allow­ing him to make his own vocal mark on the album while cre­at­ing gen­er­ally quite well-crafted har­monies between his voice and those of his fel­low singers. Blanck him­self is pos­sessed of a par­tic­u­lar­ily gen­tle voice, which seems to effort­lessly swim through the music of Alibi Coast. While this cer­tainly helps to develop the relaxed sound of the music, it does, at times, stray towards sound­ing some­what irri­tat­ing, and it occa­sion­ally seems lack­ing in vari­ety. Of course, that is where the other vocal­ists come in. Car­o­line Polachek (of pop group Chair­lift) is prob­a­bly the best of Blanck’s con­trib­u­tors, espe­cially on “Answers,” where her more force­ful voice com­ple­ments Blanck’s quite well. Unfor­tu­nately, at their worst, the guest vocal­ists can sound more super­flu­ous than any­thing else.

Lyri­cally, Alibi Coast fits its musi­cal mode quite well, how­ever, it doesn’t do much more than fit, as rep­e­ti­tion and frankly mediocre lyrics don’t do much to improve the album. As a gen­eral rule, the lyrics seem to be there more to extend the sound than any­thing else, as lines like “I remem­ber being with you and watch­ing our mem­o­ries fade / And I’ll never remem­ber / Why I shouldn’t have stayed” epit­o­mize “generic.” Rep­e­ti­tion is com­mon, but, as it tends to occur on the best lines rather than, as is so often the case, the worst, it’s not nearly as detri­men­tal as it could be.

Alibi Coast as a whole oscil­lates between being noth­ing more than soporific and being truly engag­ing and thought-provoking. The worst offend­ers, the first few tracks, give way to much more inter­est­ing sounds late in the album, such as the dark major­ity of “One Sided Town,” pas­sion­ate regard­less of being pur­pose­fully lethar­gic or force­fully angry. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s so much of Alibi Coast that is frus­trat­ingly banal, and not nearly enough excel­lence to truly make up for all the rest. Alibi Coast is not a great album, but at the same time, it’s worth a lis­ten, at least at times.

This post is tagged 50-59, Sebastian Blanck