Navigator – Bad Children
When I first started playing this album around the house Mrs. Toad’s series of reactions were instructive. ‘What the fuck is this discordant shite?’ was the first. By the third time around she was asking ‘Who are these guys?’ Then where they were from. Then she was looking them up on the internet. The Mrs. Toad Seal of Approval is a rare and elusive thing but Braden J. McKenna, from Bone Valley, Utah, has it.
To be fair to her initial, somewhat horrified reaction, the production values on this record are, deliberately or otherwise, as rough as a bear’s arse. There are even times when all the crackling of amps and peaking of microphone channels threaten to overwhelm even my own somewhat obsessive taste for this kind of low-fi style. It was, as a matter of fact, all recorded in bedrooms and living rooms, so the phrase ‘bedroom production’ is quite literal in this case. Ten songs, half an hour, a simple but excellent album. McKenna has recorded pretty much all of it himself, bar a very little cello and trumpet, occasional guitar help, and a couple of different drummers helping out.
Good tunes are good tunes, however, and as low-fi indie rock goes, this is really good. What leads the album, for the most part, is the following: firstly, a fairly constant rhythm, which comes from the guitar playing as well as how the songs themselves are written, not just the drums; secondly, a wailed, emotive vocal rendered somewhat distant and smothered by the production values; and thirdly, a constantly growling electric guitar.
The guitar has just a little country in it at times, especially when picked, but that frequently gives way to impassioned, distorted solos in tandem with crashing drums and mewling keyboards. The lyrics can be difficult to make out most of the time, but when those crescendos build there is a wounded anger to the noise, albeit muffled and disguised by the recording style. It gives the strong feeling of an album recorded in the grip of confused, retaliatory hostility born of misunderstandings, miscommunications and relationships that threated click, but never quite did. That may be nonsense, but that’s the impression I get from the music, and I honestly can’t understand enough of the lyrics to contradict it.
It doesn’t come across entirely as an album of alientation though, despite that impression being very strong in a couple of the tracks. There are comfortable, happy places to be found, providing a reassuring balance to the less harmonious moments. As its centrepiece, the truly gorgeous, acoustic Work is Done breaks the wall of fuzz at the perfect time, and with the final two tracks, Jesus Christ and Found a Fox, it winds down with a lovely sigh of acceptance. A job well done indeed, and an album perfectly executed.
Navigator – Danger Dragon
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