I want the kind of love that is carved into trees

Hi everyone, I’ve been gone a couple weeks at the end of the year tournaments. I’m happy to say that Dartmouth managed the semifinals at the CEDA National tournament and the finals of the National Debate Tournament. That means that I’m now free to spend the next month doing nothing except reading for fun, playing frisbee and soccer, cooking vegan food, and writing about music. So the pace will pick up again here.

I want to get started by talking about That’s Him That’s The Guy. I posted about their excellent EP last summer, but now they’ve got a full-length record called An Army Life that’s well worth a listen. This is an album of bright ideas, bittersweet dreams, layered sounds, and pastoral harmonies: tinkling bells, a few well-placed strings, and light, suffusive percussion that touches gently, but quickly takes hold of you until you realize your feet are tapping and even your pulse is pumping in time with the beat.

In general, there are two types of songs. The first are classic backyard country fare: full of warm harmonies and a rollicking beat, exemplified by album-opener “The Wedding Song” or “Gold Truck One (A Cease Fire),” the latter of which contains one of the most enchanting wordless choruses you’re likely to hear in many a year. “Half” is buoyed by banjo that would feel at home on an old Kingston Trio record.

The second are slow, heart-rending tunes, too dark to easily be considered folk, but too beautiful to be thought of as anything else. “Polish Lancers” is built around almost staccato and yet endlessly soothing guitar line that reminds me a great deal of late-90s Ani DiFranco.

The few weak songs are mostly in this category. “A Jody Call,” for example, buries the melody too deeply in harmonies that unfold too slowly to ever gain traction. The same could almost be said for the album closer “Hawk Overhead,” which would run the risk of feeling a bit too listless were it not rescued by an understated and achingly beautiful slide guitar accompaniment which provides a pure breath of life.

All of the elements come together in the penultimate song “Red Folder.” It starts light but insistent, held together by a violin that lives deep in the lowest registers. It could stand alone as an envoi to a friend who committed suicide, but then two minutes and twenty seconds in, something changes. An acoustic guitar comes to life out of the silence, and the phrase “to what end” which before had conveyed sadness, loss, purposelessness is now transformed. Here, it becomes a shout, a paean to all that is beautiful and true.

There is still a sense of endless loss, and yet you come to understand that there is so much more. Every sadness carries with it the memories of what came before. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry, and sometimes you’re not sure which it is. All you know is that you have to let it out and let things fall where they may.

All that, and I still haven’t talked about my favorite track: “Mutual Assured Destruction.” Understated and elegant, this is the summation of their talent. I know this sort of comparison is so cliche, but it’s just too appropriate to pass up: this is the song Sufjan was never quite able to write for his Michigan album. Yes, really.

Mutual Assured Destruction – That’s Him That’s The Guy
Red Folder – That’s Him That’s The Guy

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