REVIEW: Leland and the Silver Wells — Straight to Your Town (LP)
Irreverent in “A Drink” and spellbindingly bound to the melodies in “Story of Love, the beats that we find in the psychedelic-tinged new album Straight to Your Town by Leland and the Silver Wells are certainly as important a conveyer of emotion as any lyrics are, if not a bit more in a few select instances. Straight to Your Town, much as has been the case with previous works this band has released, has a surreal quality to its construction that makes anyone feel as though these musicians are intent on hypnotizing anyone who happens to come within earshot through a system of rhythm, rhyme, and intoxicating harmonies, but it’s hardly missing the focus and drive of a more straightforward release.
URL: https://lelandandthesilverwells.com/
Production quality has always been of some serious importance to this band, and it’s in this sense that there isn’t a lot different from Leland and the Silver Wells’ eponymous third record here. There’s just as much of an emphasis on intricacy in the likes of “Sweet Misery” and “Take It Down the Line” as there was in the memorable “We Dissolve” and “Coming Down” some four years ago; it’s the substance of the detail in this LP that feels entirely more complete than what I was originally thinking I was going to hear. This band has grown a lot, and not just in terms of technique; they’ve found clever ways to meld the supremely intellectual with the cosmetically accessible, which is hard for any band to do without having to lean on an old fashioned pop songwriting concept.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t some retro elements to behold in Straight to Your Town — “Won’t Be Long,” “Saving Grace,” “Stay in Your Lane,” and “Love Is Blind” have a certain ’60s rock framing that doesn’t feel entirely tethered to past pop culture. It’s a more fashionable homage in spirit than a lot of the other content I’ve been listening to in the past six months, and in terms of its importance to the underground at the moment, I think one of this album’s best qualities is its ability to reconcile a formerly outdated concept with a lot of new, post-hipster ideals for making rock n’ roll that would otherwise sound out of place in this setting.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/straight-to-your-town/1617000362
Thoughtful and a lot more disciplined than its predecessor, which was one of my favorite records to drop in 2018, Straight to Your Town is a fantastic addition to Leland and the Silver Wells’ discography, and potentially the best demonstration of what they can compose thus far. This is their most impressive work as far as songwriting moxie goes, and although it’s missing some of the raw sensibilities that made their self-titled LP such a fascinating listen even after several years of sitting on record store shelves, this isn’t a band that wants to stay stuck in the late 2010s, but instead push ahead into the future of what is debatably becoming a new renaissance for college rock and indie pop the same.
Colin Jordan
