Trainspotting.
'Tight Knit' plays like the musical equivalent of building a model aeroplane: precious and painstaking. Vetiver main-man Andy Cabic approaches his retrophonic recidivism with all the joyless craft of a trainspotter, building his own tiny models of the past as some sort of self-appointed beacon of preservationism. Just as giant airships that once throttled through the clouds can become molded polystyrene and hobby glue, those old all-analogue albums authored when fear of being drafted or beaten up or shot whilst protesting can become safe, pleasant, non-threatening little records made by new-millennial nerds buying into the myths of nostalgia.
If this sounds like a broadside at anyone any kind of unashamedly backwards-looking record, it's not. I've nothing against any kind of music ever recorded at any point in time as a source of reference. I've just got something against Tight Knit.
The fourth Vetiver album, and first for Sub Pop, is exactly the opposite of what any wantonly-retro record should be: not passionate and joyous and reckless, but affected and self-conscious and cautious. It, to these eras, singlehandedly takes Cabic and co from blandly-non-threatening to persistently insipid. Their laid-back music is, really, like some cooler variation on Jack Johnson, yet in the face of such blandness Vetiver records are imbued with a sense of self-righteousness.
Proselytizin' the Jukebox
All unironic, unwashed hair, hats, and beards, Vetiver worship at the altar of pop music’s ‘golden age,’ their rose-tinted recreationism summoning a mythical musical time that exists only in their minds. Cabic's long-time cohort, Devendra Banhart, when trying to shrug off the freak-folk tag, coined this hippy recidivism ‘naturalismo.’ That's cute, and all, but ‘nostalgismo’ seems more appropriate.
The last Vetiver LP, Thing of the Past, found Cabic cribbing a set of covers plucked from circa 1967-'71; the Vetiver frontman openly outing himself as era fetishist. Tight Knit might be all Cabic ‘originals,’ but the vibe’s the same. Chasing some eternal ’68, it’s mellow to the point of meekness; the players handling every diffident folkie strum and delicate brushed drum —every McGuinn-ish 12-string lick and every croaky Young-esque vocal— with kid gloves.
All this genteel devotion can only make a listener yearn for the broad, lurid pastiche; make you wish that Cabic was some dilettantish, Beck-like shyster out to stripmine old genres of their hooks, then move on. But Vetiver’s retrophonic reverence is never that fun. Nor actually fun at all. Instead, it carries itself with the smug, superior, holier-than-thou air of the true believer. Déjà Vu may be his bible, but Cabic still sounds tediously preachy.
Record Label: Sub Pop
Release Date: 17 February 2009
