Rock CriDick: Threadbare by Port O'Brien

Before even pressing play on your iPod or player, before you even have the opportunity to decipher the lyrical presentation, and prior to the first note of the opening track, the listener has all kinds of signals that what is about to transpire will be a somber affair.  Whether it is the melancholic cover art, the In Memoriam displayed in the liner notes, or the title of the album itself, the participant should be aware that heartbreak, daddy issues, and occasional outbursts of unhinged emotion will follow once the disc starts spinning its swirl of oppressive darkness and resilient light.

Mood-wise, the album resembles a pre-Marr Modest Mouse on a relatively contented day.  Or, it could also be akin to a sinister Band of Horses unable to recover from a bad breakup, vocal reverb still intact, of course.  Aside from a few impassioned tracks, the album appears to take place off in the distance, shrouded in a mist of sorts that keeps the listener at arms length from the subject matter.  Particularly when the female vocalist (Cambria Goodwin) takes the lead.  As if willingly sequestered in a bunker, the soundwaves travel to the surface, but in an obviously muted form.  As if most of the songs are recited via memory; a decaying sense veiled by the mystery of time's indiscriminate destruction of that which had been familiar.  But rather than being muted by any physical or temporal barrier, it seems that there is an emotional barrier at work.  A resigned exacerbation that casts words off into the distance, protecting both source and listener from the torment that may lie in between.

At times, the verse seems stretched to the breaking point as on the title track.  As if the melody is held hostage to the composition (generally striking thanks to the work of Jason Borger), which being already paired with a pre-existing poem, forces lyrics into narrow-fitting passes.  At other times, Port O'Brien demonstrates an outstanding ability to align melody with meter on par with something one would hear out of Simon and Garfunkel, as is evident on Love Me Through.  And throughout the album, there is never any difficulty with finding the right words to express just what pain the subject might be going through.  Perhaps nowhere more clearly than on Calm Me Down:

I need somebody to calm me down.
Before my body can rest.
Every time I come back, this town
Puts my will to the test.
Never though I'd back down.
Or settle for anything less.

And perhaps it is such internal struggles that leads to the album's struggles.  At most points somber, at others fervent, the problem doesn't lie in deriving beauty out of such obvious pain.  The problem lies in the imbalance from song to song.  Most notably when the distant, gloomy tracks of Cambria Goodwin intersect with the more rounded (and audible) tracks of Van Pierszalowski (male vocalist).  The production contrast is so stark that one can not tell if Goodwin's songs are to be treated as true tracks that stand on their own, or if they are meant to represent ghostly interludes that simply fill space between the more substantial material.  And when Goodwin's tracks happen to follow one another (Next Season > Darkness Visible) the problem becomes even greater as the tracks seemingly blend into one long meditation on if there is truly any point in going on.

The turmoil that courses through Threadbare is summed up best on In the Meantime:

Loved you for a long time, hate you in the meantime... In between the truth.

And while the truth may currently offer no comfort or respite from psychological struggle, the band's efforts to cope have certainly had a positive impact on their music.  Perhaps if they can achieve some additional peace of mind, then a more cohesive product will follow.  We just hope that this does not come at the expense of the band's current proclivity for lucid psychoanalysis.