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Reviews for
When We Were Lost
©2000, Truckstop Records #Alp315/Truck15
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It is hard to sit down and figure out which albums are actually worthy of a "rearview" feature.
There are plenty of "older" albums from the classic rock vaults, but it quickly becomes a slippery slope when you start to think of stuff that everybody knows and the stuff that everybody should know. Then there are what I will tentatively call new classics. From this group would come selections like that completely credible Danielson album Ships that not many people took seriously and that The Fiery Furnaces album Blueberry Boat that not many people knew exactly what to do with. All classics. For the time being, though, I will ignore the many classic rock staples and focus on the new classics. However, the album that I have in mind to share with you may be one of the prettiest contemporary recordings that you have never heard of.
The name of the band is The Lofty Pillars. They are a slow-working collaboration from Chicago. They trade in somber-yet-mellow tunes accented by the beautiful mixing of a lazy sounding piano and pedal steel that sound more like old-school introspective county music than anything else. The project has been around making music since the turn of the latest century. Started by Wil Hendricks and Michael Krassner, the band features as many Chicago musicians that it could get its hands on. The album, When We Were Lost, includes a cast of characters including drums by the perpetually mesmerizing and tasteful Glenn Kotche from Wilco as well as members of acoustic-blues-art-rockers Califone. Fred Lonberg-Holm contributed cello work (he is another Chicago guy that is sought after throughout the world for his performance expertise -- you may also remember him from a small part in the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart where he recorded cello parts for "Reservations"). Not bad company to have on your debut album.
Most of the tunes on the album start out slowly and drowsily, but as the compositions build upon themselves they unfold into a practical orchestra of reflective and wistful gorgeousness. They are coaxed along by Kotche's background rhythm-keeping drumbeat that is so precise that you could set your watch to it. Inevitably, every song on this album erupts into a chorus that rides the line between joyousness and despondency. The only way to be able to tell for sure which emotion is correct is to listen closely to the lyrics. The light, airy vocals tell stories of frightened people, darkness, the unfortunate people, things like that. You may think that all of those things lean toward despondency, but just wait until you hear the beauty that is born when these guys belt out a chorus that says: "God bless the unfortunate ones!"
This is the story of this album. Bit after bit of beautifully joyous yet mellow tunes. It is this complexity between joy and sadness that is most interesting to me. The Lofty Pillars made a shockingly pleasant album here that creates a feeling so unique and discernable to the listener -- a thing you don't find too much anymore in indie pop music. As is the story with all of our "Rearview" selections, it is difficult to understand why a band like this never got their due. Maybe it is because of a reason that I read about in a recent review of a band on pitchfork.com. The reviewer claimed that the record they were reviewing dealt too much in beauty. And, for the writer, the beauty got old after about five minutes. Apparently this made the reviewer disapprove of the album. Well, I haven't much to comment on about that particular episode, but I will say that if beauty in song never gets old for you then The Lofty Pillars When We Were Lost will be right up your alley.
-Gary Sheppard, figandmint.com
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