“Generator ^ Second Floor”
from the album Weathervanes
2009
iTunes
Freelance Whales are one of those bands that I’d like to dislike. They live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They do things like perform on Bedford Avenue to a crowd of hipsters. They note that they roll their own cigarettes. And they list the harmonium as an essential instrument. They include mathematical characters in their song titles. But I can’t get myself over the delightful, heartbreaking fairytales that spew from their debut album, Weathervanes.
Weathervanes opens with a sonically delicate piece of work, pairing what sounds like a psychedelic-riddled electronic section with the plunking, folky guitars of Old Crow Medicine Show. Soon enough, the chorus of nearly the entire quintet pipes up and sets the tone for the rest of the album: “In our native language we are chanting ancient songs / and when we quiet down the house chants on/without us.”
And that’s exactly what the majority of this debut brings. Freelance Whales have managed to channel something eerie, dreamlike, and seemingly autonomous — the sum of the players being much more than each individual part. On songs like “Kilojoules,” the summing of parts is especially apparent. Toy-like, 8-bit keyboards a la to Casiotone For The Painfully Alone mesh with a bevy of traditional folk and rock instruments and results in nothing short of pure, child-like fun.
“Starring” is, perhaps, one of the most delightful jaunts through the dream-scape (yes, the band sprouted from the dream journals of vocalist Judah Dadone), sounding just as much like an auditory rainbow post-rainstorm as The Magnetic Fields reborn with a vengeance. The songwriting here, and throughout, exemplifies the sort of 21st century aesthetic that audiences are growing more and more accustomed to. These are songs of half-thoughts, of not-quite-ideas, of semi-convictions that trail off into doubt and vagueness. At once earnest and pompous, they are not lyrically for everyone; but I’m sure into it.
Other times, however, Freelance Whales are more than direct. On “We Could Be Friends” there’s the clear sound of 20-something heartache, plunked out with definitive bluntness as the band hushes and Dadone whispers the first few times, building by the end of the song, “Please don’t put your face into your hands / We could be friends.” No strangers to hooks and the Broken Social Scene-esque of layering them over each other endlessly, this song rings out as a highlight of what Freelance Whales are capable of.
The album settles comfortably in what people will refer to as “neo-folk” or “indie-pop-folk” or “post-everything,” and none of these labels will come close to what Freelance Whales have given us. Supposedly the band name is both a description of the music and the band’s lifestyle outside of music. And, for once, it’s pretty perfect. These boys have a lot of talent in a lot of different areas. It’s jittery, downplayed, catchy, dreamlike, and imperfect, but it’s all presented in true New Yorker “freelance life” form. Somehow, despite all the half-notions and semi-cheesiness, there will always be a place my heart for an album that culminates with lines like “don’t fix my smile / life is long enough / we will put this flesh into the ground again” in celebratory fashion, complete with electric guitars and xylophones both playing independent melodies. If the name of the album is any sort of indicator, Weathervanes will certainly point you in the direction of where music should be moving toward.