The Dream Syndicate make a pretty awesome new album. Let us now praise not all that famous men (and a woman) ...

 

Let’s talk about the Dream Syndicate. They have a new album on Anti-Epitaph. You know, what gradually became viewed as Steve Wynn’s band. Until it was, well, Steve Wynn’s band and he had a solo career. Sigh. The guy has never made a shitty record. Some are better than others, but so are your mornings.


Anyway, let’s talk about the Velvet Underground. You know you want to. Everybody does. They were great. Yup. They made a mindfuck of a debut album that set the template for everything left of center since. But damn it, in 2017 people get to have a variety of opinion about which of their four (VU being almost a fifth, the others being live records) being the best Velvets album. 


Among the tiny brain trust of alternative media, no such discussion is allowed when it comes to the Dream Syndicate. Nope, they made a revelatory debut (and their debut is most like the VU’s debut - not insignificant, since the Velvets were an acknowledged inspiration to the DS) - then it all went downhill, maybe not precipitously, but their debut became the unchallenged favorite. 

I bet Steve Wynn gets all this. Pretty sure. I’d also bet it pisses him off, a little. Despite the stodgy Sandy Pearlman rhythm tracking of Medicine Show (it was the Eighties - click-tracked fucking everything), the band’s major label one-off, for A&M, had some amazing moments. As late adolescent noir goes “Merrittville” made every Springsteen yarn or Mellencamp ditty about darkness on the edge of the county line or whatever sound like Agatha Christie compared to Jim Thompson. Out of the Grey had some great songs, and new guitarist Paul Cutler made up in precise emotional nuance for what they lost in Karl Precoda’s proto-Mascis abandon. Then there was Ghost Stories, produced by Eliot Mazer, who worked extensively with Neil Young. It was leaner, meaner and in its thrashing way a punchier-punkier set than given credit for, and as always, with a bag of generally stellar tunes. 

I like them all. Sue me. 

Not-so-fast forward almost thirty years. THIRTY YEARS? Remember when you were young? If you’re old, that is … and a three year gap between an artist’s records seemed like a bloody eternity? 

Who’s involved? Steve Wynn, of course. Drummer Dennis Duck, also original. Mark Walton, bassist on the last two DS albums (does that make him Doug Yule?). And in the not so easy position of covering Precoda and Cutler guitar territory, while making his own imprimatur on the group’s sound, is Jason Victor, frequent Wynn collaborator. 

Job well done by all. How Did I Find Myself Here? is a knockout return, honoring the band’s past work, but in no way humbled by it. 

Wynn is the words guy. Some of the themes are consistent. Wynn has an oft-noted noir sensibility. What i notice, parallel to that, is his fondness for characters adrift. Wynn speaks through them. As producers, the band and keyboardist/collaborator Chris Cacavas, use subtle vocal effects and mix placement to accent the different characters, or states of mind. “Filter Me Through You” puts the singer front and center despite the lyric’s impression of surrender and inevitability. Victor’s sustained single-note guitar work places the sound distinctly in the Eighties mode the old DS, but also similarly vintaged bands not generally linked to the DS, like the Psychedelic  Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen. The vocal is also out front on “80 West,” a taut, concise portrait of a criminal on the run, a guy who knows what he’s done and can’t quite confront it yet. His protests of “I can’t figure it out” gradually sounding less like puzzlement and more like denial. The arrangement is genius, the band has a casually relentless drive, before each chorus theres’ a descent into guitar maelstrom that purposes like a mini-“Day in the Life” crescendo. 

Vocals recede a little in other tracks, often having more reverb and distance. For “Glide” this technique communicates impermanence; Wynn’s vocal stating defiance (“I don’t have to come down”), while his tone telegraphs the isolated melancholy of his freedom. “Out of my Head” is straight up old fuckers rocking. The theme of personhood as burden persists, chugging along with a “White Light” snarl, Wynn looks for “anything to get me out of my head.” Escape is chimera, but no less attractive. The same applies to “The Circle,” a looping storm of riff and jagged chords that rocks like a  bitch. “Like Mary” provides a sweetly grim breather, a stately folk-rocker worthy of Warren Zevon; Mary’s character is a quieter version of the dude in “80 West” - escaping, but from a stifling domestic life rather than a crime scene. Again arrangement serves emotional timbre. The band keeps hinting at a musical break out, but Mary’s dreams haven’t gotten her free, not yet, and the track pulls an Atlantic fadeout. 

see, what i'm saying?

The album cover evokes jazz jackets like Ornette on Tenor, and the title track is jazz hip, no surprise to fans of the band who remember “John Coltrane Stereo Blues” from Medicine Show. This time out, the reformed DS take a turn toward Miles Davis territory. Chris Cavacas’s organ lines, reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s from Miles’ classic A Tribute to Jack Johnson, twine with Victor’s and Wynn’s funk-rock guitar fun. At eleven minutes it takes up more than a quarter of the album’s playing time, but on a sundown drive through the Flint Hills it’s pretty groovy. 

As Wynn sings on “The Circle” it ‘never ends,’ and “Kendra’s Dream” is proof. Original bassist Kendra Smith returns to the fold, and it makes a lovely coda to Find Myself. It’s stunningly contemporary. I was impressed immediately by it’s noisy, but ambient resemblance to the work of artists like EMA. Smith’s free verse flowing into a sort of chorus that goes “I keep having the same dream; it’s a beautiful dream.” As it fades you hear Wynn’s voice join her, alternately, their voices eventually indistinguishable, dissolving into a whisper cosseted in white noise. A sweet exhalation to an edgy trip, an fitting end to a damn fine record. 

___________

Personal note: 

To my regret, I’ve never seen the Dream Syndicate. Some friends caught them back in ’83, at Leavenworth penitentiary, no less. But I saw Steve Wynn once, late Nineties as I recall, at the Bottleneck in Lawrence. Poorly promoted, and not at the apex of his solo career, there was a turnout of eighteen or nineteen fans. The man put on one of the most charged sets I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot more than you. Afters, he hung out, chatted, drank beer, and generally acted like a mensch. You remember the guys who give you, and their art, everything - even when they could take a raincheck. 

Personal note (slight return):

In my petty, ongoing mockery of Pitchfork I submit that their reviewer assigned How Did I Find Myself Here? a 6.9. Back at the record shop we used to play a little Pitchfork game. Someone would shout out an artist’s name and I’d guess, based on Pitchfork’s past prejudices, what point rating their new release had been given. I got pretty ace, rarely missing by more than a .4. 

6.9. Remember Lou Reed’s Take No Prisoners record, a delightful concert monstrosity, as much banter as it was music. Lou chides Robert Christgau (a far better writer than anyone at Pfork) for giving him a B-grade, saying “you work for a year, so some asshole in the Village Voice can give you a B.” Ha, ha, ha. 

Personal note (go ahead, laugh): 

I paid money for this music. I’m not always a dog. Support the artists you really enjoy to the best of your pay packet’s ability.