01. Clutching Stems
02. Light on the Narrow Gauge
03. Fallen and Falling
04. Ignore the Bell
05. Oh Christina
06. Caught Don’t Walk
07. Breaking Up on the Beat
08. Into the Strait
09. Hey Jack I’m on Fire
10. Life Less True
A member of the Ladybug Transistor appears only once in Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, 2009's wonderfully engaging oral history of the North Carolina label. It's a candid photo of a party during Merge's 10th anniversary festivities, in 1999, and keyboard player Sasha Bell, who also plays and sings with Elephant Six-affiliated labelmates the Essex Green, stands among more than a dozen other revelers. She's facing away from the camera.
Brooklyn native Gary Olson and the rotating lineup of musicians that make up the Ladybug Transistor have been courting such brushes with indie almost-fame since the mid-1990s. They came closest with 1999's The Albermarle Sound, a model of psych-spangled, baroque-inclined indie pop. Bell left the band after 2003's fine self-titled album, which was recorded in Arizona rather than the band's usual Flatbush. And the Ladybug Transistor faced tragedy shortly before the release of 2007's disappointingly transitional Can't Wait Another Day, when they lost San Fadyl's steady drumming due to his death from an asthma attack.
Four years later, the Ladybug Transistor's seventh album (and sixth for Merge) brings together yet another iteration of the band's roster for a modest, pleasant indie-pop record. "Low-stakes" is a phrase that seems to come up a lot these days, but it's not quite right for Clutching Stems, a solid record that's stylistically as lush and rich as ever from this group-- this is the opposite of lo-fi, the antithesis of garage-rock. Still, as easy as it is to root for the Ladybug Transistor after all these years, and especially their more recent hardships, the songs themselves often blend together, and sometimes it can be hard to remember their particulars.
Clutching Stems steps back from the country and western direction hinted at on Can't Wait Another Day, and there's nothing here as jarring as the now-prescient sax solo from that album's opening "Always on the Telephone". Instead, the Ladybug Transistor's latest stays mostly in a safe but always comfortable cocoon of what could be called "classic indie pop": crisp drums, intimately mic'd acoustic guitars, chiming electric guitar riffs, autumnal keyboards, regal trumpet, and the gentle interplay between Olson's practiced baritone and guest Frida Eklund's soft harmonies. It's all rendered with appealing warmth and clarity. You could trace lines back to the Smiths, the Field Mice, and the Left Banke, or forward to Belle and Sebastian, Jens Lekman, the Lucksmiths, the Clientele, and the Radio Dept.
Trains, Brooklyn, beaches, and crumbling relationships populate many of the lyrics, which tend to be understated and erudite, rife with slant rhymes and unexpected line breaks. "Oh Christina" is fairly representative: After field-recorded noises of seagulls and a subway train's arrival at Brighton Beach, a delicately picked acoustic introduction gives way to subtle, sophisticated 60s pop, weighted with music references: "Can't you see it/ Was not me who believed that love will tear us apart." The title track takes the Metro-North rail line one-way toward regret ("stems" somehow rhymes with both "friends" and "flames"), "Light on the Narrow Gauge" neatly evokes the "dying light" it describes, and "Breaking Up on the Beat" is a stately, melancholy reflection set by the oceanside. "You know me, but not too well," Olson adds on another lonesome, midtempo contemplation, "Ignore the Bell". If only that were a little less true. Clutching Stems is a patient, exquisitely produced indie-pop record that never quite makes eye contact...www.pitchfork.com
