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Strange thing apartment life: you might live next door to someone for years, sleep head to head with only a few inches of drywall and brick between you, hear their most intimate moments, their joys and sorrows, (albeit somewhat muffled) and yet never see more of them than a passing glance as they come in or out, or share more than a few words of greeting or farewell. There might be a moment when you pass their half open door and can’t help but look in, try to see how they’ve got the place laid out, what their furniture is like, how they live.
Listening to Apartmemt Music, the new compilation of work by seven Twin Cities’ artists on Free Election Records, is like passing several half open doors and catching glimpses of the secret lives lived behind them. The fourteen tracks are divergent in style but share a quality of quiet intimacy, a somberness like you feel in the late January when it still gets dark too early and the windows are shut tight against the cold. The songs tell of loneliness and heartbreak, but also hope and the possibilty of connection, like the promise of spring after a long winter.
Work of Saws provide a few of the sunnier moments on the record and kick it off with their intelligent pop in an XTC mode and bookend the album with their compelling "Texa Tonka Annex." The Owls, featuring Brian Tighe and Steve Ittner of the semi-famous Hang-ups, provide a pair of numbers which hearken to the Velvet Underground sonically but soar above their influences to become something truly original: "City Girl" features a plaintive, spare piano melody and gorgeous harmony vocals by Allison Labonne and Maria May. Their "Black Hands of Thyme" begins as a minor waltz with a Reedesque half spoken, half sung vocal that turns ethereal in its bridge. In another standout offering, Kid Dakota sample a Brian Wilson sigh and play off the Beach Boys myth to achingly sad effect on "Get Her Out of My Heart." Mike Brady, omnipresent on Twin Cities’ club stages, appears here with his own band on the haunting "Exploding Boat II" and "Coffee Cup," and with Florida on their angular "Octane Moon" and "Bully the Boy." Six degrees of Mike Brady continues with two tracks by his former Accident Clearinghouse band-mate, Quillan Roe with his rueful country-tinged torch songs, "Ain’t the Movies" and "Do You Have to Go."
The Ashtray Hearts, whose own much anticipated full length release Old Numbers should be out this month, and whose leader Dan Richmond also heads up Free Election, have two tracks, "Still Shaking" and "Necessary Planes" which achieve a solemn grandeur in their arrangement and in a sense define the emotional tone of the record in the counterpoint of hope and pain, regret and fond retrospection that plays throughout.
The quality of the recordings is impressive, the maturity and assuredness of the performances is consistent. Unlike some multi-artist collections which sound like the scraps and leftovers from other projects, this is a compilation of the best work of these artists and well worth seeking out.
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