Archer Prewitt - Three
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CD Details
Artist: Archer PrewittEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2002-06-04
Music Label: Thrill Jockey
Soundtracks:
- Over The Line
- Tear Me All Away
- When I'm With You
- Two Can Play
- I'm Coming Over
- Gifts Of Love
- Second Time Trader
- Atmosphere
- Behind Your Sun
- No Defense
- Another Day
- Sister Ice
- The Race
- The Day To Day
Music reviews of Three
Music Review: The new sincerity
Rating: 5 Stars
"Welcome to the home where no one ever goes," begins Archer Prewitt's third LP, as tentative mellotron strings score taut lines in the air above his everyman voice. This is a visit to a musical haunted house with more good ghosts than bad, a gloomy abandoned mansion whose creaky floorboards still rock and snap every now and then.
This album has often been appraised--both for the better, and for the worse--as an homage, throwback, nod, etc. to the lush pop sensibilities of 70s rock, a re-realization of a musical era akin to Josh Rouse's 1972. This may be true, but there's something more there, something I think most critics are missing. You can hear it in the chilly autumnal stroll of "Over The Line", where Prewitt croons, "In the darkness your eyes would shine, I had it all."
The anachronistic quaintness of Prewitt's compositions inform not only his retrospective glance, but also the slightly eerie, slightly pleasant feeling of displacement you get from listening to a song that was recorded two years ago but sounds like it's been around for decades. It's maybe the same feeling you get returning to the town where you grew up after many years away, or watching a Wes Anderson movie. (Indeed, the harpsichord of "Tear Me All Away" sounds like it was lifted straight out of Mark Mothersbaugh's Rushmore score.)
The songs on Three, much like Anderson's movies, evoke a time that is definitely in the past, though they are set in the supposed present, and the alternately discomfiting and inviting responses they elicit are entirely deliberate. When we sit down in someone's wood-paneled, shag-carpeted basement rec room, we know something's not quite right, but we're still cozy as hell.
This is a cozy album, rich with compositional ideas and song structures, tempo and mood changes that make for songs within songs, and evocative but familiar-seeming lyrics. It lulls you in with ballads like "Over The Line" and "Atmosphere" and then rocks your face off with the cocky strut of "Second Time Trader". Grown weary of avoiding Beatlesque arrangements, Prewitt embrances them unashamedly on "When I'm With You". Same goes for the Burt Bachrach epidemic that infects "I'm Coming Over".
Indeed, the New Sincerity movement seems to have found a musical acolyte in Prewitt, who served enough time in the paragon of hipster insouciance that is the 90s Chicago indie scene to know what he didn't want his solo albums to sounds like, and he's developed the confidence to throw his slim frame behind the sentimental lyrics, lush strings, brazen horns, and proggy arrangements and weather the inevitable snorts from his post-rock peers. Thank god.
Description of Three
Prewitt is the guitarist for The Sea & Cake, he has released 2 albums and an EP on Carrot Top Records. Three, the first for Thrill Jockey, was written and produced by Archer, who plays guitar and sings lead vocals. Three bounces along effortlessly and also features the vocal talents of Kelly Hogan and Nora O' Connor. 2002."Here?s another lovely day / When you feel lightness" Archer Prewitt sings on "Another Day," one of this album's 14 cuts. Those lines nicely sum up Three's plush pop vibe. The disc's highly melodious, exquisitely arranged songs draw from '60s and '70s pop, but manage to retain their own identity. The Chicago-based composer/multi-instrumentalist orchestrates guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, strings, horns, and other instruments in extraordinarily delicate and tasteful ways. Paul Mertens's flute playing makes a number of welcome appearances and female backup vocals grace several tracks. Prewitt shows restraint in his musical layering; a hovering organ chord or a lone cymbal tap richly resonates in this highly refined context. Prewitt makes airy music, but his lovely indie pop is never lite. Whenever a song flirts with blandness, some impossibly rich and intoxicating instrumental texture is sure to emerge. And Prewitt's production perfectly integrates his sweet vocal timbre into the just-right instrumental settings. Three provides the delicious pleasures of pure pop. --Fred Cisterna
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