Aural Fixations

HOWIE BECK
Hollow
(Devil in the Woods/Future Farmer)
NIK FREITAS
Here's Laughing at You
(Future Farmer)
ANDY STOCHANSKY
Five Star Motel
(Private/RCA Victor)
Back in the early 70s, singer/songwriters ruled. Introspective, sensitive young males like James Taylor and Jackson Browne combined the melodicism of the Beatles, the simplicity of folk music and the insights (take that word however you want) garnered from hours of navel-gazing for a new breed of rock and pop that gracefully crossed party lines of popularity between the counterculture and the establishment. (Female songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro were prominent around the same time, but for some reason didn't gain the commercial success the dudes did, despite being quite often artistically superior to their male counterparts.) Though the genre's commercial fortunes wax and wane, depending on the contemporary musical landscape, singer/songwriters are always a fixture, either bubbling under the pop charts (Duncan Sheik, David Mead) or finding success by re-naming their art something like "adult contemporary" or "alternative country" (Mason Jennings, Josh Rouse). Most just stay the course of their artistic muse, putting their feelings on staff paper and pouring their hearts into their latest combination of chords, in the hopes that someone, somewhere will understand.

Of the latest crop of tortured young men, Toronto's Howie Beck stands tallest, despite staying in his bedroom. Beck recorded Hollow on 4- and 8-track in his apartment, playing all the instruments himself, which accounts for the sedate sound of the record. This is definitely music recorded so as not to wake up the neighbors. Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially when it suits the tunes so well. Beck weaves lush melodies into a thick tapestry of hushed melancholy as masterfully as king of pop gloom Joe Pernice (maybe a little too masterfully—"She Moves (Rosie)" is practically a tribute to the Pernice Brothers, though Beck would no doubt prefer the term "homage"). Gorgeous tracks like "I Won't Be Sorry," "The One You Wanted" and "Baby Plays Around on Me" find something beautiful in resignation by framing it with plush guitar/keyboard arrangements and Beck's soft vocals. He rocks things up occasionally, as in the ultra-catchy, uptempo "Serves You Right" and "What You Found," but the slow and sad is his real stock-in-trade here, and he wallows in self-pity gracefully. Hollow may live in the dark but it shines brightly. (more)

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