If the first side of Small Factory is an audience-confessional, the second side is a lonely and different beast. “Bright Side” fades in with a seemingly hopeful message: “If you start to cry,/ I’ll be the one to wipe those tears from your eyes.” Only thing is, the terms and conditions of this friendship are a continual mess. The ceiling is thought to cave in, the once-quiet voices (a rare time to feature the backing voice of Phoebe Summersquash) and guitars get more chaotic and the promises become destitute threats until the lyrics tell us the end is near; the green grass coming. It is a short introduction to the sea change awaiting us. “Bright Side” prepares us for the turn toward reverie and vagueness, the opposite of what we’ve experienced thus far in the record.
Replacing Alex Kemp as lead singer is Dan Auchenbach, and he leads “Sun Goes Ahh” into apocalyptic surreality. “I know you’ve been waiting for a long, long time,/ I’ve been waiting too./ But I won’t wait until the sun goes ahh,/ When the sun goes ahh,/ I’ll be lying down with you.” More passive and general, the album’s structure and intimidating specificity give way to a brittle bleakness. “I said, ‘come on let’s make the end of the world– come on let’s make it over now.’” The loudness, the crassness of earlier songs is now conciliatory to endings and beginnings. “Sun Goes Ahh” builds nicely into a measured, rocking and altogether cold ending– the significance of the end of the world alluded to in the song. Whether relationship-driven or actually apocalyptic I’m not sure, but the song is a simple and calculated evolution.
Continuing on a rollicking note, “Three Months Later” is an easier-swallowed capsule of Auchenbach’s style. At first ungraceful, the song bridges into a stream-of-consciousness back-and-forth between both Kemp and Auchenbach. As the songs recedes and rebuilds, the group flaunts their full capability: the drums are a purposefully messy splash of cymbals, the guitar and bass are playfully similar and the vocalists are dropping different points-of-view on the same subject. The songs almost dares the listener to think the men are arguing belabored points before they both chime in on the final, repeated line: “No, I’m not gonna fade/ not gonna fade away.” Despite the various problems each song has brought up, the band settles on a simple refrain from the past. They have created a mantra; no matter how unbelievable it may seem.
For If You Cannot Fly preaches in simple refrains. Throughout the record to this point, each song has a simple lesson or at the very least a thematic expression of lessons learned. Even the demonic-sounding “Everyone’s Happy…” sings parables and periodic bursts of hope in an otherwise complicated (though undefined) norm. The refrains are seldom perfect or even self-professed as correct, but they are nonetheless a point of need for the listener. When I hear “For When You Cannot Land,” I hear a parental-like voice of summary. A makeshift burden begins the song: “Couldn’t land at all today… You’re looking awful bad/ and me I look like you.” The song pipes in with a noisier guitar and Alex Kemp retakes the lead vocal. “Sure, it still hurts,/ but it’s not much worse/ and besides, I’m not having much fun.” The lines are reflexive, less-than-poignant statements of fact. “What if I got sick?” “What if they sent me to Mars?” “What if I can’t send a card/ ’cause I can’t tell it’s Christmas anymore?” The lyrics devolve into a deep-seated fear, but the absurdity Kemp exudes brings levity. “For If You Cannot Land” isn’t the end of the world like “Sun Goes Ahh,” or a specific feeling like the beginning of the album, but it is more important. “For If…” is a list of possibles and a statement of the obvious: anything is possible and nothing good is happening. Kemp and Summersquash even trade off saying: “Don’t make me say it again” before finally Kemp reluctantly repeats the beginning line, “Couldn’t land at all today…”
The second half of the album rejects so much of the conventions of Small Factory’s previous songwriting. The verse-chorus-verse half of the record is past, and the pain and realization of repeating lines falls in tandem with beating the point home rather than filling space. Yes, the songs Kemp sings are similar, but “For If You Cannot Land” squarely belongs where it is, as all the songs do. The second half of For If You Cannot Fly is dialogue instead of storytelling. It is rationale instead rationalizations. And the record ends with pop sensibilities missing in the rest of the songs. Traditionalism oozes from “Sixteen Years Later.” The chorus is a chugging train that devolves into the singers recanting the word “home” as they crest a mountain. “Well, you know sometimes I don’t think any time has gone by/ No time has passed at all (Auchenbach)/ and my life’s just a movie with a story and an ending and all that after all (Kemp).” They describe the sights from the “big fast train” by saying “things go by.” It’s so fitting that the images we get throughout the album are exactly that: “things go by.” No relationship is described, but each is detailed. No statement is fact, but each is truth. As each listener heads home, to the end of the album, we are reminded that over each obstacle, things go by. It’s certainly a cop-out to say it so easily, without even having to try. But so is telling me about snow or a woman’s dress, or the hue of a partner in mid-argument. Sometimes it’s easier to tell the listener nothing rather than confer everything.
Of course, Small Factory tell us everything we need to know on “For If You Cannot Fly.” We learn, in short spaces, what happens. We learn that nothing alluded to is simple, but the outcomes and circumstances should be. Most of all, though, the summaries are brief and knowing ones– a cavalcade of problems that glimmer with hope and resentment. The lyrics are both realistically specific or hopelessly vague, but at no time are they unbelievable, shallow or without merit. The three-piece both experiments and falls into grooves. They are angry and honest while being sensible and clairvoyant. Small Factory watches, reacts and tells a pretty good story about consequences. As “things go by,” they took note of the most important lessons and instances and we, the few listeners, are better off for it.
I can’t describe what I’m like when I play this record, but I know I’m pretty content when it is on. Whether I find myself yelling alongside “Expiration Date,” nodding to “Everyone’s Happy for the First Time in Weeks,” or relating to the lost kid inside of “Sun Goes Ahh,” I’m content that I might be the only person in the world listening to this record. I’m comfortable with the notion that I’m one of the only ones who loves it like I do. Yet, I am dually uncomfortable that so many people don’t love it and that I was unable to tell them about it. I just can’t handle anyone telling me what it is not when it is, is, is so much.
12 Desperate Straight Lines sounds sort of like a cross between Phoenix and early solo Paul McCartney. Now, depending on your tastes, that simplistic assessment could span from high praise to damnation, but happily for everyone I’d say the truth lies somewhere in the good part of the middle. There’s plenty to applaud on this sophomore effort, its few arguable missteps generated by production choices and not a lack of talent, which in its own way would be less frustrating and more easily dismissed.
