Bishop Allen
Grrr…
(Dead Oceans, 2009)

The Broken String had some catchy tunes and lilting harmonies, but for me, Bishop Allen—Justin Rice, Christian Rudder, et cetera—is still “the band with the guys from the Andrew Bujalski movies.” In their Harvard buddy and ex-roommate’s critical cult faves Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, Rudder and Rice, respectively, “um” and “er” and “ah” their way through conversations and relationships, and generally embody the ambivalence of adulthood—of smart, well-educated, young people who’re either paralyzed or regressed to childhood by the demands of actual human existence.

And that’s a helpful thing to have in mind—or, at least, was a helpful thing for me to have in mind—during “Dimmer”, the opening track on their third album, Grrr…. “Am I dimmer every day?” asks Rice, in his sweet singing-to-a-kid croon, over an occasionally precious arrangement of toy percussion and a guitar dipping in and out. “Olly, olly, oxen free,” goes the childlike chorus, “Can you see me?” ‘Olly, olly, oxen free’ being, of course, what kids say when it’s time to come out of hiding. “Dimmer” seems to be a whimsical, wistful song of worry about the long, slow disappearing act that is adulthood. Dimmer every day; where’d all the other kids go? Bishop Allen, like Bujalski, manages to articulate the desire for a return to a childlike state without seeming childlike. While seeming, in fact, entirely self-aware.

Bishop Allen makes playful indie pop with sing-along choruses, whispery intros, boy-girl duets, and “la la la” and “ah oh” backup vocals with plinking music-class instruments, horns, and handclaps. But at the same time, they pen very literate lyrics, with a sharp eye for detail and a variety of strategies for narration and address. There are the specific rhyming instructions that begin “Dirt on Your New Shoes” (nothing stays new), or “The Ancient Commonsense of Things”, whose lyrics are mostly an inventory of everyday objects—the expression of wonder at the simple rightness of the world comes off as a metaphor for love. It’s an innocent sentiment, eloquently expressed.

Indeed, Grrr… is, throughout, deceptively simple. When, in “The Magpie”, Rice describes a girl “crying, crying, crying on your front porch swing,” it sounds like a lullaby or jump-rope chant between acoustic plucking and slow accordion swells. He offers a faux-naïve account of getting rolled in the boisterous, mariachi-ish “Shanghaied”, and sings about being “a mumbler” and “a sloucher” in album closer “Tiger, Tiger”—a title that references William Blake (there was a self-aware arrested development case) with lyrics that, amid Italian restaurant violins, provide a clean, artful, figurative description of human behavior.

The 13 songs here take up only 36 minutes; song titles include not just magpies and tigers but lions and elephants, oh my. If you are the parent of a child under eight, this is the indie rock record of the year. What’s remarkable, though, is how many car trips you’ll be able to listen to it on without losing your mind.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Tags: Bishop Allen, Grrr, Dead Oceans, Justin Rice, Christian Rudder, Andrew Bujalski

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