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'Autumn' leaves lot to be desired

Pinback's newest effort a melancholic mistake that just misses the mark

By Jeremy Johnson
jjohn308@mscd.edu

It seems only apropos that San Diego band Pinback’s new album Autumn Of The Seraphs associates itself with that season of transition between summer and winter. Not quite hot and not quite cold, the latest alternative/indie effort from Pinback is as squarely middle-of-the-road and tepid as the vernal equinox that it references, and its pace is as slow and cumbersome as a grizzly bear preparing for winter hibernation.

That’s not to say Seraphs isn’t a clever album, full of intricate and homogeneous harmony and wispy, warm vocals. And their soft synth, piano and percussion sounds cascade lazily like brown leaves falling to the ground. But those gems of delicate indie rock are lost early on in multi-instrumental frontman Armistead B. Smith (more commonly known as Zack Smith) and sidekick Rob Crow’s steady, sleepy beats and blasé vocal inflections.

So while early tracks such as “Good To Sea,” (filled with witty wordplay in the lyrics “It’s good to sea you/ It’s good to sea you go”), and “Subbing For Eden” (“And I consume the raging fire/ And I can feel the depths of the ocean/ And I become consumed by desire”) pepper the album’s A-Side tracks, other songs such as “From Nothing To Nowhere,” “Barnes” and “How We Breathe” lack any real conviction in their convoluted messages and have no feel for the various subtleties and nuances of the alternative music medium. Even their dog-eared theme of the ocean is as old as the moon itself, and literally drumbeat to death by other modern music acts such as Modest Mouse.

By the time Pinback reaches the seventh track, “Devil You Know,” and the following track “Blue Harvest,” it sounds as if Smith and Crow have broken out of the album’s earlier, hypnotic and transfixed sounds of melancholy, but, as Pinback puts it in “Devil:” “It’s the part of you that stays/ Leaving nothing but a stain.”

Essentially, we’re left with only a stain of what might have been a successful alt-pop record, as Pinback’s lack of tempo, energy and charisma makes the album as exciting as a hammock nap during a mild, sedate, Indian summer day. Basically, Pinback plays like Wilco, without the will, or Spoon, without the spunk.

While the album is just beginning to receive a small amount of commercial and chart success, it remains to be seen whether or not Pinback will bounce back with a more energetic effort in the future.

And perhaps, instead of falling back onto their conventional and dull compositional tactics, Pinback will spring back with a pulse, warmer lyrical wit and just maybe with a more hyped-up sense of music’s eternal hope.

Pinback is currently on tour with Frightened Rabbit and will perform Oct. 19 in Denver at the Gothic Theater on Broadway Avenue.