Trembling Blue Stars

Trembling Blue Stars
Alive to Every Smile
[Sub Pop; 2001]

Modern technology sure is swell, isn't it? Today, modern aircraft technology got me from Indianapolis to Boston in six hours, with a stop in Newark in between. Modern airport security technology let the people in charge know that I was carrying metal objects. To my amazement, they ignored it and waved me through without checking me. Luckily for them, I didn't have a revolver strapped to my hip-- rather, I was merely making use of the slightly more archaic pants-retaining technology known as a belt buckle.

I guess you could say that all of this falls under the umbrella of using technology for good, even if human misjudgment sometimes interferes with its purpose. Of course, human mismanagement spoils a lot of potentially promising technology on a regular basis-- just look at the music industry. Somewhere along the line, bigshot producers seem to have picked up the idea that if you take a terrible song and dress it up in enough shiny electronic packaging, it will become a good song. At some point, the public apparently confirmed that this idea generates large amounts of income, because it's become fairly standard practice.

That's just my theory, of course. Naturally, I have a lot of corollary theories to that one, principle among them being that if overproduction can mask a piece of crap, then it can also mask a gem. Upon listening to Alive to Every Smile, Trembling Blue Stars' fourth album, I found that second theory being proven, and I grinned like the smug bastard that I am.

Head Star Robert Wratten (formerly of Field Mice) writes some pretty decent songs, when you break them down to their base elements. The melodies are fine, if unspectacular, and the lyrics are better than average broken heart stories-- suffice to say, Wratten probably has his navel pretty much memorized by now. Unfortunately, producer Ian Catt seems intent on giving Alive to Every Smile a bigger sound than it really needs to get its point across. A lot of bands venture close to soft-rock territory and come out unscathed. Trembling Blue Stars aren't so lucky.

The two greatest offenders come back-to-back in the middle of the album. "Here All Day" opens with some syrupy organs, over which Wratten intones in his unbelievably fey voice, "Someone stop the hands of time/ Every tick's a cruel blow." Multi-tracked female backing vocals swim in Lexicon reverb, invading the second verse before big, booming toms ripped straight from a 1984 top 40 station provide the final scuttling blow. "Until the Dream Gets Broken" follows with programmed bongos and the same backing vocals, both featured more prominently this time. The gloss is so blinding that it's difficult to see the song underneath.

Those bloody backing vocals pop up all over the place, too, and they never once truly add anything necessary to the song in question. They're just a distracting background texture on the otherwise good "Ghost of an Unkissed Kiss." The rest of the arrangement is fine, though, drawing from 80s jangle pop and adding in a nicely executed backward guitar solo for good measure. The refrain of, "Dry eyes, dry eyes/ It was never going to end with dry eyes," is probably the catchiest thing on the album. With a slightly dryer mix, though, it could be more immediate.

One improvement Wratten and the band have made since their last effort, 2000's Broken by Whispers, is the fact that their songs now flow a little more smoothly from section to section. A lot of the songs on that album were plagued by jarring transitions from quiet verses to loud, seemingly unrelated choruses. Here, only one song suffers from that affliction. "Maybe After All" opens with quietly strummed verses drenched in reverb (there's actually a rather neat little bit of processed hi-hat embedded low in the mix, too), and suddenly transitions after a couple of minutes into a dry verse complete with drums, bass and some nice countermelodic guitar parts. And of course, before long, those damn backing vocals are back, taking up the space that would have sounded better empty.

One of the main reasons Alive to Every Smile turns out so disappointing is that it begins on such an interesting note. "Under Lock and Key" opens the record with distorted drums and varied tape speeds before a guitar loop enters and Wratten actually says something assertive for once. "You've got to stop fucking her up/ You've got to grow up," he sings to a guy who presumably isn't treating his girlfriend very well. Wratten's guitar tone is thick and commanding-- it reminds you that he can actually really play the thing well. He also handles the backing vocals himself, which is a plus.

"With Every Story" actually carries on fairly well from there, with Wratten pulling out a good chord progression and a nice, Bernard Sumner-inspired guitar sound, but the sheen that plagues the rest of album begins to creep in, and by the third song there's really no going back. Closer "Little Gunshots" makes something of an attempt to darken things a bit with a brooding synth figure, but the textures turn a little too new age-y to be really engaging. By the time the album ends, it's easy to find yourself somewhat sick of Wratten's merciless self-pity, too. He ends things with the lines, "You're waving from a leaving train/ And every part of me screams your name/ Think again, please think again," and it's a bit of a relief knowing that he's finally done complaining.

Fans of past Trembling Blue Stars efforts will probably find a lot to enjoy about Alive to Every Smile, even with the overproduction. Most other people would be pretty well-advised to stay away, unless you're desperately seeking an indie-approved gateway into the world of lite FM. Ultimately, the band and their producer fall into the trap of placing too much stock in technology, sadly failing to trust Wratten's songwriting to work on its own. In the end, the surface has become so smooth that there's almost nothing left to grip at all. In the future, Wratten & co. would do well to put yet another theory to work for them: less is more.

-Joe Tangari, February 12, 2002