Morning Spy, The Silver Age

Morning Spy is a poppy quartet from San Francisco, and on the band’s new record, The Silver Age, the songs encompass a range of feels, from rocking and energetic to calm and mellow — although even the energy of the loud ones is pretty contained. The band has two singers, Jon Rooney, (who sounds kind of like Robyn Hitchcock, and who writes the songs) and Allison Goffman (who’s got a nice voice, dreamy and youthful). They seem to be as interested in arrangements as anything else; the production varies from song to song, giving them all different feels.

A number of the songs sung by Rooney don’t work that well, unfortunately. The arrangements are fine, but the melodies are weak. “Princess Vancouver” tries too hard to be a pop song and just gets old. A lot of his lyrics are dorky — a line like “A haggard rider rode up beside her and said the world is not dead / He offered no proof, just the promise of the temple in the square” relies more on making it rhyme than on making it say anything interesting. The keyboard part is pretty cheesy, to boot (and not helped by their use of the “Strings” setting). Some of his songs succeed (“Ask Us to Dance” is a pretty song), but a lot of them have the same problems (“Sugar Witch” gets really irritating).

The songs sung by Goffman are more interesting. She sings my favorite two, “Foggy Filter” and “Overnite.” The latter is their most mellow and atmospheric song, aside from the instrumental closing the album, but it doesn’t rest on the atmosphere — it’s also got a simple and beautiful melody and a great guitar riff. The band adds just enough variations to the arrangement and dynamics keep the thing moving but not so much that it takes away from the sleepy mood (particularly with regard to the discipline of the drumming). I’m still not completely sure what the lyrics mean, but since it seems at least partly to be about confusion, I suppose that’s appropriate. “Foggy Filter” is faster and more rocking, with a simple, catchy melody and sturdy guitar part and overall, it’s just as good a song. In the end, if Rooney wrote more songs for Goffman, they’d really have something. But the songs he writes for himself don’t work as well.