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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Idaho Album: The Lone Gunman Label: Idaho Music Review date: Oct. 9, 2005 |
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The loudest record Californian Jeff "Idaho" Martin ever made was also the most crushingly sad. It was 1993’s Year After Year, the record with one other guy on it. Since then, he’s usually worked alone, navigating a vision that grew at once more experimental and less exhausting. As he’s screwed around with electronics and negative space, his low, unsteady voice, which once channeled the most pure depression in popular music, now sounds more peacefully contemplative. Sad, maybe. Miserable, nah.
Idaho never again bottled Year After Year’s melancholy majesty, but it never did what anyone expected, either. On The Lone Gunman, a roughly even split between songs and instrumentals ('cause it ain't a song 'less you can sing it), Martin drops the guitars altogether. This strange, gentle beast knows only piano, Wurlitzer and Prophet 5. That leaves little angst, at least as expressed in the language of rock. The Lone Gunman exists at a point where pain is all the more real for its frustrating subtlety.
NBC hunted Martin’s head to score its new show “Inconceivable.” Most of The Lone Gunman sounds like the soundtrack to something. For better, for worse, or otherwise.
Two of the songs protrude proudly from the rich, compelling wallpaper. “When Sunday Comes” is some muffled weirdness with a warped rhythm. On “You Flew,” Jeff Martin, he of one of the most exquisitely anguished voices in music, sings over a polka beat. It’s a bit like a sad limerick.
By Emerson Dameron
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View all articles by Emerson Dameron