It sometimes seems like getting signed to Underwater Peoples involves having a comically waspy name, a suburban pedigree, and an affinity for R. Steevie Moore-styled cheapo guitar sounds. Also: New Jersey. The whole thing could probably be mistaken for some sort of twee front for a white supremacist group, but Underwater Peoples is actually one of my favorite labels. UP artists put out good music that tends to make up for in sheer earnestness what it might lack in complexity. At first glance, Andrew Cedermark fits the Underwater Peoples mold; and yet his music seems to represent more earnestly roots-folk and Americana influences thank anyone else’s on the label. With its western grace and Northeastern coyness, Home Life should earn Cedermark the removal of his Titus Andronicus pedigree from every internet mention of his music. Home Life is a fantastic album that never steps outside of the demure and wholesome; it is unaudacious, its songs beautifully afflicted with down home existential crises and built around Cedermark’s excellent guitar work and compellingly stuffy vocals.
Home Life opens with “On Me” which is a jammed up and expanded cover of “Lean on Me.” The song serves as a teaser to the rest of the album, and actually reminds me a lot of the way Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain opens with the Buddy Holly-referencing “Silence Kid.” It’s disjointed and strange, but it’s like an orchestral warmup that vamps you into the heart of the album. “On Me” swiftly transitions into the meandering “Tiller Of Lawn” which is built around a kind of descending, parallel minor inflicted scale that reappears on Home Life. The focus here really seems to be Cedermark’s vocals, which carry most of the album’s emotional load, though guitars certainly do a lot of the talking.
Cedermark’s voice is perfectly unstable; he has an uncontrolled, raconteuring style that dutifully covers a surprising soulfulness. On “Heap of Trash” the watery guitars are occasionally accompanied by chamber-esque backing vocals that act like temporary heavy cream to the song’s black coffee chord structure. Nowhere are Cedermark’s subtle vocal chops more apparent than on lead single “Canis Major.” Cedermark’s vocals could never match up to a more persistently energized singer like Patrick Stickles, but everything from his nuanced intonations to the occasional bluesy harmonics is perfectly suited to Cedermark’s music. Soft and intimate, but not without some invigoration and sharpness.
There is a perceptible western tinge to Home Life, and songs like “Memories, Ah!” sound like heady cowboy spirituals. In much the same way as other Underwater Peoples releases (especially Real Estate and Julian Lynch’s Lines), Home Life sounds rich and humongous with texture. There’s a mystic fogginess to the songs that gives everything a laid back and summery feel; if I could describe it with a location it would be summer in the backyard of the kind of spacious suburban house on Home Life’s cover. This isn’t an album for the beach, but it might work for the beach house. Home Life sounds very personal, especially on tracks like “Canis Minor” where Cedermark almost seems lost in a contemplative exchange with his guitar. Home Life is also an album that sounds like it needed to be made; as though it’s covering for something intensely personal. For this reason, many of its more theraputic aspects could fly over the listener’s head.
“Men in Jail” closes out the album with some endearing last-song bombasticity, containing some of Cedermark’s most startling vocals, as well as a closing guitar solo that seems to scream “this is America.” Nothing on Home Life is as bombastically emotional as a track like Moon Deluxe’s “Anchorite” but that’s because Cedermark seems now to be dealing in the subtle and elongated push and pull of tone and form more than in confrontation, whether it be through outstanding moment or melody. It’s weird just how much Home Life sounds like a singular piece, rather than a collection of distinct songs. Though based almost entirely around the electric guitar and containing not unsubtle allusions to roots rock and road rock and garage rock, this is not a rock album. This is a guitar movement.
4.5/5 bars
