Yessir, they sure do like to take their time in Anacortes. Why, last time I came down to call on my half-cousin Zeke he held up dinner for three hours waiting on ol' Mindy Sue, who was supposed to bring over a big sack of onions but got caught up in fixing the compost shed, seeing as the shed man couldn't make it because he was getting his hammock extended that day and the hammock man was stuck in a tractor jam on Route 20...

Ahem. 'Scuse me. See, I've never actually been to Anacortes. It's probably a very nice place to raise a family or own a boat. But, suffice to say, a tiny Washington port town doesn't seem to be the sort of place that could support any sort of music scene. Against all odds, however, a pretty formidable one seems to be thriving there, based mostly on the talent and industry of The Microphones' Phil Elvrum and the patronage of Beat Happening alum Bret Lunsford, who runs both an indie record shop called The Business, and the Knw-Yr-Own label which teethed The Microphones and handles the other Anacortesian bands' releases. And of course, when he's not lending from his banks of indie cred, Lunsford also gives back to the community as principal member of D+.

With Elvrum and singer/songwriter/Microphones-song-title-referent Karl Blau backing him up, Lunsford's band has the makings of a gen-u-wine twee powerhouse. Lunsford, however, also likes to take his time. D+'s last album, Dandelion Seeds, came out back in 1998, and he's been silent ever since. In the ten years since Beat Happening called it quits, Lunsford hasn't strayed much from his previous band's pop-rock primitivism, either. If anything, D+ takes the concept even farther; where Beat Happening was plain, D+ is downright homely. Lunsford's back-of-the-throat Muppet croak doesn't quite have the same charm as Calvin Johnson's wide-eyed baritone, and Dandelion Seeds attempted to get by mainly on its lazy, clumsy naivete, to mixed results.

Mistake's eponymous opener injects some much-needed energy into things-- Elvrum lays out a skittery, metronomic beat behind Lunsford's Luddite growly rant about how his TV is stealing all of his friends. The song actually manages to maintain a menacing atmosphere with surprising efficiency-- a few abrupt stops, some intermittent feedback drones, and Blau's deep harmonizing on the chorus give bite to what might have otherwise been a goof. Unfortunately, D+ hasn't quite gotten the hang of intensity yet; "God Above God", while attempting a brooding shamble, just kind of plods, and the religious message collapses under its own weight.

But it's the lazy love-pop stuff that D+ have finally, gratifyingly, figured out. "Megadose" fortifies Lunsford's shaky tenor with a wall of 'Phones-y harmony on the choruses, and "What's Not to Fall in Love With" elaborates along the same lines, spinning out a shaky, sad, breeze-thin and bleary melodic web. In the bluntly affectionate "You're So Right", the great lines that Lunsford scatters throughout his songs finally cohere into a brilliant closing: "Run away from who I know I am/ Jump into someone that I can't swim/ Plant my kisses on another face/ They don't grow the way they do on you". "Take You For Granted", however, beats them all-- Lunsford's tuneless a capella recitation suddenly turns into a graceful ode, layered with cellos, ringing guitars, and gauzy vocal harmonies.

As much as D+ seems to be gaining momentum on Mistake, the band is still all about inertia of the negative kind-- Lunsford's lyrical landscape teems with dying stars and stalling cars. And seeing as these eight songs are just about all he's released in the past four years, he seems to be something of an expert on the matter. But if Lunsford has, in fact, run out of steam, Mistake at least provides an evocation of the sort of rural decay that can debilitate (or drive) a scene. And it'll probably pay for that hammock extension, too.

-Brendan Reid, September 24th, 2002