Cars & Trains
The Roots, The Leaves
(Fake Four Inc., 2010)

Cars & Trains is the name of Tom Filepp’s Portland-based one-man band. Filepp’s sound is a highly produced folk music that winds up sounding like a rustic Postal Service. The tempos thud, generally slowly, but a multitude of instruments and ambient rhythms keep the show moving along nicely. The record’s name refers to two instrumental tracks: “The Roots” is made up of orchestral synth music on top of a downbeat drum ‘n’ bass accompaniment, and filled out with tinkering sound effects, like a toy maker going to work in a rickety attic. Similarly, “The Leaves” contains music box melodies and a sort of watch-winding sound effect.

All of these references to ambient sounds make more sense when you listen to Filepp’s lyrics, which consistently describe interactions with his surroundings. The images that stand out the most are the numerous uses of giddy anthropomorphism. During a train ride on “Asleep on a Train”, Filepp sees “tree branches wave and telephone poles compare notes.” From “The Birds in Your Chest”, we hear of “The planes overhead / That hum their own two cents” and how “The birds in your chest / Try to reveal all the names / Of the subtle little things / We’d try to understand.” More menacing, however, are the descriptions of a homicidal workspace on “Drop Ceilings and Day Planners”, which begins, “When you first walked into the office building / That would eventually kill you,” a line that is echoed by the even more macabre, “When you first stepped into the small cubicle / That could potentially entomb you.”

Filepp’s interactions also influence the playing of his music. On “Intimidated by Silence”, he sings, “The meter of the song that I sing / Loses time with the air that I breathe / Through my lungs as the dust settles.” In this beautiful image, earth and wind seem to be conspiring to thwart Filepp’s artistic ambitions. And on “Birds in Your Chest” he describes “Rusty songs that sing / Like 9 volt batteries / Always burning the tips of tongues.” This comparison should resonate with anyone that’s ever completed the electrical circuit of a 9V battery with their tongue.

Filepp’s interactions with the commonplace border on conversational at times. While this lonely narrator doesn’t seem to have a shoulder to lean on, he reports things like “Out the Window / I heard the sound of the sun” (”Intimidated by Silence”) and “The wind on my neck / Calls its name, past my back / And it sings its songs” (”The Sun Always Sets”).

Like the naturalistic imagery that links the album together, both the lead track, “I Know Someone Who Can’t Recognize”, and closer, “Dead Telephone”, cross-reference each other musically. Both begin with acoustic guitar downbeats sketching out the same chord progression, but “I Know Someone” is an up-beat thumper, at least compared to the loping, donkey-hoof sound effects that drive “Dead Telephone.” The song, again, refers to another song on the record, with the line, “This is the song where I swore I would say / I won’t be intimidated by silence.” You know what they say—don’t swear. On the song “Intimidated by Silence”, we hear about Filepp’s lyrics turning into dust; he also notes, “Trying to paint what we see / But it comes out all wrong.” The struggles with communication are reinforced by one of the album’s closing lines, “We’re all waiting / For this song’s crescendo.” While “I Know Someone” transforms into an exuberant rhythmic assortment of static pulses, part folk and part drum machine, with as much synth as guitar, “Dead Telephone” never takes off, never crescendos, and concludes the record on a particularly somber note.

However, the record does suggest one antidote to being intimidated by silence. The solution is to listen to the imaginary jukebox that each person keeps tucked away in their auditory cortex. Filepp’s jukebox tends to play orchestral music: “The violins in my head / Bow their strings / Keeping stead.” That’s right… when the “cries of birds have stopped” and not even the jets overhead are creating enough of a hum to stave off the silence, you’ve still got the music in your head.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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