Jeff London is a wuss and his voice makes me want to hit him in the face with a wiffle-ball bat. Just something unpleasant enough to communicate my dislike, without the risk of causing serious injury. Come to think of it, maybe that's just the problem with London's album. Col. Summers Park does just enough to make a point, to communicate an emotion, but it never goes far enough in any one direction to make a serious impact. London swings a peacock feather, instead of the Louisville Slugger that any musician should wield if he expects you to give a damn.

Maybe it's the whole notion of anti-rock. If you weren't aware, Hush Records prides itself as the world's foremost producer of "anti-rock." And just what, you're dying to know, is anti-rock? Damned if I know, but Hush describes it as music "bereft of power chords and bombast, lacking bravado and hot licks," proudly admitting that it is, "well, weak," and promising that, "Yes, sirree, as long as there is rock, we will celebrate our weakness." Well, fine. Personally, I don't think the more moronic strains of rock need an antidote, being self-incriminating enough not to require outside assistance. And, well, the rest of rock either works or it doesn't. This whole anti-rock thing, though, just seems like a cheap trick to avoid being tagged as the more pedestrian "folk," or the more direct "sucks shit." But, hey, that's neither fair nor accurate. Hush has put out a fair amount of really beautiful, really well put together, um, "quiet music." Some of that can even be found on this Jeff London disc.

This album's title song is, melodically speaking, anti-original, but still a very pretty track. The doubled vocals on the second verse and the introduction of drums shortly thereafter are a few of the details that London uses to good effect, in order to build the song up from the soft, insistent guitar strumming at the track's outset. Rachel Blumberg, London's vocal adornment and partner on several of these songs, offers fragile harmonies that keep things anti-redundant.

"Strong Winters Cease" reminds me of the coda to a dinner party I attended two or three summers ago. After being pummeled by an endless supply of red wine, the party-goers retired to the living room furniture for a sit-down session of "pass around the acoustic guitar and let anybody emboldened enough by the alcohol make a fucking ass of himself." Like I said, the wine was plentiful. As one poor bastard took the guitar, people shot knowing, nervous glances at each other. And then it began. Tone-deafness and self-assurance make formidable partners, and before you know it, everybody was making the same "struggling to look normal even though I have a turd in my mouth" facial expression. "Strong Winters Cease," and particularly London's quavering, meandering lines, remind me very much of that performance. Granted, the melody is decent and the song resolves nicely at the end, but London's voice sounds best (or rather, anti-worst) when he sticks within a tightly circumscribed range.

Things dart from insipid to barely-less-so for the next six tracks, with few quality stops. "Routine Abandonment" is one of the respites. The distorted bass and piano flourishes are executed well enough to keep things interesting, and to divert attention from London's whiny pipes. Certain aspects of other tracks work beautifully. "Grenada" flexes beautiful guitar lines and harmonies between London and Hailey London, while "Long Island" has interesting, if overwrought, interplay between a pedal steel guitar, sleighbells, and a Rhodes keyboard. The withering, depressed buzzsaw guitar solo that punctures the quietude of "Cat on a String" is also noteworthy.

The album's real stand-out track, however, is the charming "How Love Is." It's pop magic, sounding something like a Beatles/Motown hybrid, with an amazing boy/girl chorus featuring handclaps, an Elvis Costello-esque melody, and the line, "That's how love is/ You can't catch in it a net/ And make it your pet for just one day."

I think somewhere along the way, sad-music musicians forgot that the relationship between "quiet," "pretty" and "arresting" is, at most, correlative-- and not causal. Jeff London can write a tune, or at least, he has the occasional lucky fluke. In any case, there's ample evidence he's got a good feel for pop melody. If he'd pawn his acoustic, stop trying to be so damned coffee-shop, and write some more bouncy sing-alongers, I'd feel better about urging you to check him out.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie, November 20th, 2001