Tim Keegan and Departure Lounge
Out of Here
[Flydaddy]
Rating: 7.6
Anyone who knows me knows that I like really, really sad music. I mean, I
really enjoy sad music. To me, the only good love song is one where someone
ends up shooting themselves, or a child get hits by a car, or someone is
misunderstood, something like that. I enjoy sad music to the point that
it's irritating to my friends. I'm the only person I know whose favorite
instrument is "slow rhythms and lightly squeezed accordions." I wallow in
musical angst as shamelessly as a stray dog wallows in stinky trash. People
spontaneously weep when they enter my room, and my CD collection looks like
the soundtrack of a "Wonder Years" episode, the one where Winnie dumps Kevin's
pudgy ass like a bag of hot rocks.
So when I find an album that makes good, sad music, I get excited. I know
that to be enthusiastic about depression isn't the coolest thing on earth, but
any album can tune into that crying, dumped-after-the-prom part of the human
psyche without coming off sappy or wimpy is about as rare as a lunar eclipse,
so I reserve the right to smile at others' heartaches. That's why Tim Keegan
and Departure Lounge's Out of Here (a fittingly dismal name) is such an
extraordinary find for fellow mope-o-philes like myself. It's 11 tracks of
heartbreaking indie-rock that never turns clownish or dumb, inducing foot-tapping,
even as you're sobbing like an eight-year-old girl.
The thing that probably makes Tim Keegan's mastery of grief-rock sound so
natural, is that he's British (or at least British sounding). The British,
being from a rainy island where everyone talks funny and eats boiled food,
know about some misery. And Departure Lounge makes it a point to carry on the
long distinguished tradition of English misery in their music. Out of Here
channels every classic, depressed English musical influence it can, from the
Smiths to Nick Cave to low-key Pink Floyd all the way up to such current limey
whiners as Blur and Radiohead.
Sad music is a dangerous genre to play around with. By its nature, it's very
high-school and very juvenile in a "I'm in a pain that no one else understands"
kind of way. The only way to make this kind of music without sounding completely
pretentious is to (1) write good songs to back all the posturing and (2) not
take yourself too seriously. Luckily, Out of Here has both problem areas
taken care of. The songwriting, usually courtesy of Tim Keegan, is smart and
incisive. Every song, although more or less about the same thing-- lost love--
is sad in its own unique way, giving the album a musical variety that most
"sad" albums don't come close to achieving.
At times, Departure Lounge seem to be in danger of going overboard with the
depression bit and selling out their credibility for cheap drama, but the music
always comes in to squash these doubts. The best example of this is the
melodramatically titled "Save Me From Happiness." Though the title is maybe
a bit over the top, the song itself turns out to be a strange and wonderfully
effective blend of Leonard Cohen-ish ballads and traditional Irish folksongs.
Another album highlight, "Stay on the Line," features a guest appearance from
ol' Robyn Hitchcock-- it's a dreamy ballad that somehow weds acoustic guitar,
synthesizers and effects-laden vocals.
If you don't Out of Here's instrumental closer into account, the album
ends on an up-note cheery enough to appear on a "Sesame Street" record. It's a
song about large smiles, warmness and love called "We Got Everything We Need,"
and it's as repulsively happy as its title implies. Maybe for that reason, it's
the album's one misstep. Maybe it's the fact that it comes out of nowhere and
throws off the rhythm of an otherwise masterful record. Or maybe it's the fact
that the damn song is performed as a campfire sing-a-long. More likely, it's
a combination of all these things that make it worth skipping over entirely.
In closing, I just want to say: "Sad people of the world unite." We've lived
under the tyranny of these smiling assholes for too damn long now. There are
enough of us to band together and rule the world, if we can ever manage to get
out of bed in the morning. Until then, we'll just all weep sourly into our
pillows, the pleasant, tear-friendly music of Tim Keegan and Departure Lounge
as our theme music.
-Steven Byrd