Pitchfork

The first time I heard the Capstan Shafts, I found myself muttering a phrase that hasn't passed my lips in a long, long time: "How can this be so good?" These days, processing new music is as much a process of verification as it is one of discovery; the tagline of any new album is likely to reach your eyes and ears months before the music it purports to describe. These records, somehow, caught me completely off-guard.

For better or worse, a brief descriptive summary of the Capstan Shafts doesn't even begin to express what makes these recent records, released separately on different labels, so good. Bands on MySpace can self-identify as "lo-fi" via a drop-down menu; there's certainly no dearth of dudes with acoustic guitars and four-tracks writing songs about relationships. Dean Wells just happens to be better than most, if not all of them. Wells has been steadily releasing CD-Rs on tiny labels since 1999, making Guided by Voices an obvious point of reference for both aesthetic and output. In fact, Wells' voice often bears an almost-uncanny resemblance to former GBV guitarist and sometimes-singer Tobin Sprout.

Last year's Euridice Proudhon is the real gem here-- a collection of smart, sharp, and emotionally resonant indie pop songs. Maybe I'm giving Wells too much credit, or overreaching a bit with my own interpretation, but this album seems to use the myth of Orpheus and Euridice to illustrate a more contemporary point: Once you cast aside your hopes and illusions and really stare down the person you're with, you can't help but lose them. At times, Wells' lyrics bring to mind early Destroyer: "The ties that bind remind you of the kind that sever/ I'm a vote in the affirmative and you are pulling my lever." And, like Destroyer's Dan Bejar, Wells demonstrates a keen understanding of which lines call for some degree of understated, self-aware panache.

The Megafauna Undermined is more awkward and disjointed, with the notable exception of opener "More Lovely Than Likely". Just bouncy enough to elide its sappiness, "More Lovely Than Likely" achieves a perfect balance of dewy-eyed romanticism and smirking coyness, and should probably be sent back in time to the mid-90s for inclusion on every "I like you" mix tape made since then. The rest of the record fails to build much momentum, inadvertently calling attention to the surprising focus of Wells' other superficially "sloppy" records.

Wells resumes his stride with the recently released Her Versus The Sad Cold Eventually. It's easy to hate this record for falling back on whimpering indie boy romantic clichés, but Wells proves more honest than most about interrogating the darker and more self-serving urges behind such gestures. The dissonance between sexual desire and emotional intelligence is a running theme throughout all Wells' music, but it finds its most direct expression here. Musically, Eventually is the most consistent of these three records, never quite reaching the heights of Euridice, but never dragging like Megafauna either. The slight whiff of noodling on Wells' earlier releases seems to be giving way to a slightly more confident and versatile sensibility, which bodes well for his next five or six albums.

It would be easy to call these records out for being samey, and to criticize Wells for sticking so closely to a "lo-fi" aesthetic. But, in a refreshing change of pace from most musicians working today, Wells doesn't seem interested in saving up his energy and working towards a singular masterpiece. As such, nothing about this music registers as particularly limited or frustrating. Each of these three records is revealing, artful and familiar-- like thrice-yearly correspondence from a distant friend. Put them together, and you have 62 songs, a surprisingly high percentage of which are well written, clever, and moving. How could this not be good?