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The Posies:
Every Kind of Light
[Ryko; 2005]
The Posies officially broke up in 1998, and immediately became one of the most prolific bands on the planet, kicking out albums, live recordings, EPs, compilations, and boxed sets. It's almost as if disbanding or the thought of disbanding (they never actually got around to it) made them realize how much they liked being in the band, relative lack of commercial success be damned. Since that initial flood of releases, the un-broken-up Posies-- which, it should be noted, is just a shorthand for John Auer and Ken Stringfellow-- have been much quieter, and after plenty of time lending their talents to other bands, including the reunited Big Star, they've finally dropped their sixth studio album.
Unfortunately, the wait comes to a fairly unsatisfying end, with Every Kind of Light largely failing live up to the band's original run. It's not a terrible, but it doesn't exactly play to their strengths, either. Indeed, it seems as though Auer & Stringfellow are somewhat preoccupied with proving that they rock, and it comes at the expense of the effortless hook-craft of Frosting on the Beater and Success. Frosting... represents the band's commercial (and, for me, creative) peak, and it seems as though they're reaching back to that sound on a lot of these songs, but in the wrong order. Whereas the crunchiness of that record was incidental, the volume cranked high in the service of the songwriting, in this case, the guys seem to be writing the songs to fit the volume they want to play at, a strategy that doesn't work nearly as well.
So you get self-conscious rockers like "I Finally Found a Jungle I Like", a flailing song with novelty lyrics and a horn part that references the Who's "5:15" but that's way too busy and graceless to leave a lasting impact. "All in a Day's Work" similarly pounds away with tons of distortion but forgets to offer anything memorable. If that were the whole story, the record would be an unqualified mess, but thankfully, the Posies are too good to make an entire album of uninspired goop. You can hear echoes of the band's past glory in the exquisite verse melody of "I Guess You're Right" and the thundering, Moog-tinged rocket ride of "Second Time Around", the album's only song that strives for their trademark heavy pop rush and actually nails it.
Elsewhere, album opener "It's Great to Be Here Again" is a fascinating foray into a humid, claustrophobic r&b sound, with guitars and mellotrons trading off the ominous countermelodies while Auer and Stringfellow interweave their vocals with their usual deftness. Auer's effortlessly melodic ballad "Conversations" is another highlight, featuring soft verse/loud chorus grunge dynamics that should feel played out by now, but actually work perfectly. Stringfellow gets in his own nice ballad with the alcohol-soaked "Last Crawl", a song that reflects a lot of his recent solo work with its smooth AM gold sheen.
So it's not the jaw-dropping affirmation of the Posies' non-break-up that we might have hoped for, but Every Kind of Light is ultimately a decent record spiked with a few classic moments of patent posies pop ecstasy. Fans will want to have it, for sure, but everyone else can just wander through the back catalog to Frosting... or the Dream All Day compilation. The Posies may not be what they once were, but, if only for the handful of great songs they offer here, I'm glad they're still around.
- Joe Tangari, August 10, 2005