Band of Annuals, Let Me Live

The first time through Let Me Live, the second album by Salt Lake City’s Band of Annuals, I wasn’t blown away. Nowhere close, in fact. It felt slow, a little dull, nearly sleepy at points. I just shrugged and turned off the CD, moving on to other things; more quiet No Depression alt-country, nothing new going on. The second time through, though, I was driving slowly home in the torrential Houston downpour, staring blearily at blurry taillights and with the rain hammering on the car’s roof, and all of a sudden Let Me Live seemed less like a bore and more like a slowly-unfolding flower.

To be sure, the album’s low-key as all heck — Band of Annuals make me think of Winterpills in that respect — but that laid-back understatedness masks a startling fact: the music is fucking perfect. No, really — the male/female harmonies (courtesy of bandleader Jay Henderson and keyboardist Jeremi Hanson) on tracks like the poignant “Lessons Learned” and resignation ode “Thought I’d Have Learned” are utterly flawless, soaring and stumbling exactly where they’re supposed to, the guitars crackle and scrape in all the right places, the harmonica sounds like a forlorn train whistle, the slide moans and wails like the wind whistling down a West Texas freeway, the melodies suck you in inexorably and get stuck in your head, the lyrics paint Steve Earle-esque pictures of world-weary characters you could probably meet at that dingy bar down the corner, and the rhythms alternate wonderfully between sorta-upbeat brushed drums and almost-to-the-point-of-gone minimalism. Every single track on here goes where it musically needs to, no more and no less, displaying a level of songwriting talent you don’t run across real often (like, maybe since the last New Pornographers album I bought). Simply put, the folks in Band of Annuals know what they’re doing, and they’ve got the considerable skill necessary to pull it off.

It also occurred to me partway through the album that maybe it’s finally time to pull the “alt-” off the “alt-country” tag, at least when it comes to bands like this. There’s nothing “alternative” about this, really — they’re just plain country, albeit somewhat of a cross-time throwback to both the mellow country-rock of the ’70s and the stand-and-sway country exemplified by Patsy Cline. Band of Annuals, to my ears, are plenty “country,” enough to be considered full-on denizens of the genre and not just indie-rock dilettantes playing the role (although I’m guessing album closer “Soon”‘s not gonna make it onto country radio, since it’s basically about a couple needing to get it over with and just have sex). And while country in general ain’t my thing, I’ve got to applaud them for that — Band of Annuals have somehow managed to make an album of just the kind of country music I do like.

Be warned, mind you, that on a casual first listen you might not be bowled over, much as I wasn’t. It’s with time that the innate beauty of Let Me Live shines through. The music is sweet and melancholy, gently swaying and rumbling beneath the gorgeous vocals (especially when Henderson and Hanson sing together, although Henderson’s voice is plenty nice on its own, too), melding the wounded romanticism of Ryan Adams with the gentle swing of old-time country (think Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys) and the scruffy edges of folks like Son Volt or Lucero. It also occasionally brings to mind Okkervil River’s slower, less literary moments, but what the album really sounds like to me is what might happen if somebody stole that earnestly downtrodden Lucero song “My Best Girl” and expanded it into a full suite of twelve songs, all sad and resigned and hitting the bottle hard, with nothing left to rely on in the world but a guitar.

Let Me Live is the sound of a man resigned to his fate, whether that fate means facing a firing squad blindfolded (the Civil War story “Blood on My Shirt”), loneliness on the road (“Mercy”), or plain old-fashioned heartbreak (pretty much every other track). Henderson sings like nothing he could do is going to matter, so what’s the point in bothering? He’s just there to take what comes, shrug and sigh, and have another round. And while that’s not the recommended way to live your life, to be sure, it makes for one hell of an album.