TRISTEN – UNPOPULAR MUSIC: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
TRISTEN
Unpopular Music (Pupsnake Records)
WELL IT ISN’T. Or if it is unpopular somewhere with someone, I don’t want to go there or know them.
Unpopular Music is a title that like much of the work of Tristen Gaspadarek is playful but not without a sly prod at herself or us, and often enough both. After all, while these are incredibly pretty pop songs, Gaspadarek works in a tricky zone where gentleness is genuine but also disguising a sharp line in observations, and songs fly by on tides of whimsy that get dismissed or get up the noses of some, but the writing is anything but insubstantial.
A song such as Know By Heart has the falling melody and low rising delivery of a trimmed fringe ‘60s singer (somewhere between a young Marianne Faithful and the more bucolic Donovan), flirts with quasi-European touches (hints of flute and flutey backing voices), seems to float by untouched (but actually has a nagging propulsion), and feels on the verge of sadness (but actually addresses the joy of a relationship that has weathered problems and can rebuild when needed). The song goes just over four minutes and feels half that length: each time it ends I am taken aback, wanting more.
Five albums in, Gaspadarek and longtime collaborator/partner Buddy Hughen know what they’re doing.
Even more than the vibing appeal of Let Go, a song that collects passengers along the way, Because Your Love Is Mine has the mechanics of jangle pop – guitar line showing the way; bass line shadowing your steps; drums keeping you moving – with the heart of a country song in its wistful melody and within it there’s the lyrical promise that everything can be alright when together: “now my joy is overwhelming because your love is mine”. Two songs later and we have moved back to the continent where the languid and yet glistening Francoise Hardy-ish Rose And Thorn nods to a folk history in its melody but feels urban modern in its tone. Love here is trickier, understandings are momentary, but longing doesn’t ever disappear.
For the East Navhville-based Tristen, country regularly pokes its nose through a number of erstwhile pop songs. Most obviously, Mona Lisa may be the Mike Nesmith song Mike Nesmith might wish he’d had in his backpocket towards the end of The Monkees/start of his First National Band: it carries a neat ache and a fluttering hope, done with an eye on the horizon.
But tucked inside the skipping, twirling and humming Skin Of Our Teeth is a big sky twang waiting to burst out; Winter Strangler comes with some of the same by-the-river limpidness that Courtney Marie Andrews does so well; and Hey La is just a charmer in second hand clothes and scuffed boots. It’s all as if Gaspadarek has found life more than bearable and has stopped hiding the news. Outrageous.
Ten songs in 36 minutes and change, and not a single one fails to connect or impress or slyly win you over. Unpopular? I should live long enough to be this unpopular.
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