Pitchfork

Likeness, the latest album from the stalwart Charalambides duo of Tom and Christina Carter, serves as a handy illustration of the conundrum that eventually catches up with such hyper-prolific acts. With a history that now spans 16 years and somewhere upwards of 20 full-length releases, Charalambides have long since reached the stage where every new recording must be first considered as an addition to their larger body of work, rather than as the separate universe unto itself that each album seems designed to be.

As with the bulk of the duo's previous work, Likeness strikes a savvy balance between tradition-based songcraft and open-ended psych-folk expression, with the basic tracks spontaneously composed in the studio and later augmented with layers of spectral overdubs. And, as per usual, the album appears during what has been yet another busy season for the duo, with Christina appearing on Thurston Moore's Trees Outside the Academy, and Tom fresh off various collaborations with the like-minded Robert Horton, Michael Shannon, and Christian Kiefer.

These abundant projects have each served to advance the duo's brilliant and largely unparalleled trajectory across the American underground. But they have also found the Carters traveling musical and spiritual territory that they've already criss-crossed time and again, whether under the Charalambides name or their own. As a result, Likeness too often finds itself occupying a nettlesome middle ground that will likely prove too alien for newcomers, and too familiar for longtime fans.

The primary twist in Charalambides' strategy for Likeness is that the album's lyrics are largely derived from the traditional, public domain American songbook of the 19th and early 20th centuries. (It's the same strategy, incidentally, that has also served Jackie-O Motherfucker well on such recent albums as Flags of the Sacred Harp.) Since lyrics have rarely been particularly central to Charalambides' music, this makes for a subtle but intriguing variation, especially in contrast to Christina's frequently wordless vocalizing on past works such as 2003's Unknown Spin or 2004's Joy Shapes.

Hence, on such tracks as the opening "Uncloudy Day" or "Saddle Up My Pony", familiar and/or evocative lines like "Saddle up my black mare/ Gonna find me a fair shake/ In this world somewhere" bubble up through the ether like half-buried memories. Christina is in marvelously clear voice throughout, and is particularly effective on the melodic, multi-tracked plea "Do You See?" and the relatively straightforward electric blues of "The Good Life." Meanwhile, Tom's guitar frequently takes on a darker, harsher tone than is his usual, and his playing on the hard-driven "Saddle Up My Pony" skirts close enough to VU-inspired rock that one can't help but wish they had taken the final leap and added a full rhythm section.

Elsewhere, the Charalambides' many virtues are unable to overcome what can seem dull and directionless material. The plodding "Uncloudy Day" sets the traditional hymn's words across a pair of repetitively lapping chords, as Tom's guitar searches fruitlessly for further entry into the song's melodic tides. Likewise, the overlong epic "Memory Takes Hold" sluggishly drifts apart in a manner that is neither as immediate as the warm psych-country of last year's A Vintage Burden nor as sublime and transformative as Joy Shapes. Throughout the album, Christina has reconfigured traditional lyrics into inspiring, if rather abstract, protest songs. Yet this quiet activism can seem somewhat superfluous for a group whose very existence has always cast them as an oppositional force, one with a true counter-cultural spirit to which Likeness provides another interesting chapter but too few plot twists to truly succeed as a stand-alone volume.