Dolorean, Not Exotic (Yep Roc, 2003)
Dolorean makes a gently dark folk music that draws on Nick Drake and Elliott Smith in its slow tempos and sad, introspective lyrics. At the center of this Portland, Oregon, based combo is singer-songwriter Al James, who reportedly spent the better part of a couple of years moulding Not Exotic to his exacting standards.
The album has become a sensation in alternative-country circles, due in no small part to Clark's indie-rock aesthetic and lightly drawling vocals. Though it follows in the confessional singer-songwriter tradition, musically it easily shares sonic space with other "dark country" practitioners like M. Ward, Canyon and Damien Jurado.
Rounding out Dolorean's lineup are Jay Clarke on keyboards, guitar and percussion, Ben Nugent on drums and vocals, producer Jeff Saltzman on bass, mandolin and guitar, and Skip Vonkuske on cello. That cello is the first thing you hear, opening up the first track, the hauntingly beautiful "Morningwatch." It's a spare portrait in James' free verse of someone who wakes "with the starlings," and finds himself unable to sleep again at the end of the day: "And as night falls I prepare my bed and curse the pillow's stony lies/For just as sure as my body begs for rest I'll be up before the sunrise."
"Traded for Fire" is a bitterly sad song about love, deceit and lost friendship in a country-folk setting with a slow rocking beat. Like a song by The Band, rich with piano and organ, its lyrics of romantic wreckage are sung in close harmonies: "I set a snare for myself and fell headlong into ruin." "Jenny Place Your Bets" uses gambling as a metaphor for love in an acoustic country-soul setting tinged with psychedelic folk, replete with keyboard swashes and mandolin tremoloes.
A sleeper hold is a move used by police to subdue people resisting arrest; by putting pressure on the carotid artery, they can cause the subject to pass out. In a notorious case in Portland a few years ago, a suspect died because of improper application of the hold. In his song "Sleeperhold," James draws on New Testament imagery for a deceptively languid song about betrayal: "I wanted the heavens to open like a saloon door/but all I heard was a cock crow./What have I done? I cried inside/and my spine turned ice cold."
In "Hannibal, Mo.," James sings his own version of the time-honored murder ballad. In this one, the protagonist is guilty of swimming out into the Mississippi until his girlfriend was too weak to return to shore. From his prison cell, he remembers lying with her on the riverbank, "We fall asleep to the barges and the fireflies."
James seems to have paid close attention to the romantic poets. In the closing number, "Spoil Your Dawn," he sings the lament of a man to a woman of whose love he feels unworthy, because he's more interested in making money than love: "You might be surprised by how oft' I think of you/but ambition has encamped around me." And the final lines sound like something by Byron: "Find another who can love you strong/let not my dark clouds spoil your dawn."
This is heady stuff. Dolorean's music is beautifully orchestrated without overwhelming the poetic lyrics, played and sung in a straightforward manner. Al James and his crew are carrying the torch of the literate singer-songwriter to a new generation. Bravo!
Dolorean have a Web site here. At Yep Rock's Web site, you can find more information about Not Exotic and touring dates for Dolorean.
