Bilby "Life In The Slow Lane"

Life in the Slow Lane is the most appropriately named record I’ve heard so far this year. Although the album was recorded in a professional studio, it feels like the musicians were hanging out in someone’s house on a farm, with a reel-to-reel and a hammock nearby. The various field recordings (studio chatter, crickets, hissing sprinklers, and street noise) add to the pastoral atmosphere. The songs are often carried by little more than a guitar, a drum kit, and a voice, and few of them even approach mid-tempo. The artwork, which consists of vintage photos of cars, cows, and happy couples, underscores the music’s static, easygoing, and surprisingly happy temperment.

“Got a bit of sunlight in my concrete yard,” vocalist Chris on the Slow Lane’s opening track, “Collingwood.” “Molokai” is the musical equivalent of a pep talk from a best friend, with Chris cramming the chorus with euphemisms for “cheer up.” On “Saltfree,” alternate vocalist Beth assures a friend coping with guilt that “everything’s gonna be alright.” There are a couple of depressing songs about people who refuse to leave their rooms (“Anna”) or socialize with others (“Red Wedge”), but in Bilby’s world these people are the exception and not the rule.

Even within such a limited instrumental framework, Bilby adds little garnishes to their songs to reward listeners who give them their full attention. The album’s first three tracks, as well as a later instrumental interlude called “Capybaras,” make extensive use of backward guitars and vocals. “Red Wedge” marks the first appearance of bass guitar ten tracks in; the bass does the melodic work while the guitars churn out subtle streams of feedback. More than anything else, though, Bilby’s employment of two separate and distinct vocalists gives Slow Lane sonic variety.

Chris has the clearer and more pleasant voice of the two, and she sings the more traditional rock songs. Beth, on the other hand, has the most nasal lisp I’ve heard since Aggi Pastel. Her voice is wisely reserved for the album’s more experimental songs, like the countrified “Clocks” and the arrhythmic piano piece “Lament.” Beth’s occasionally off-key and crackling voice, an acquired taste, is responsible for the album’s only misstep, “Seize My Day” (which sounds like a Sundays demo gone horribly awry). Fortunately, the album is sequenced so that Chris and Beth take turns handling the microphone, ensuring that listeners don’t get bored or irritated with either of them. Album closer “Hangnail” is a sweet-sounding duet between both singers, and its placement on the album is a stroke of genius.

Nothing on this album demands your attention, and very little of it will tax your patience. However, Bilby’s music avoids turning into aural wallpaper by carving out a very distinct niche in the slow-core sub-genre. Neither as narcotic as Mazzy Star nor as tense as Low nor as desolate as Idaho, this group’s minimal songs are instead carried by a clear-headed optimism, proving once and for all that slow songs don’t necessarily have to be sad songs.

---Sean Padilla

Artist Website: http://www.bilby.info