Pitchfork

Whenever any hack musician puts out a new record, his publicist will inevitably trumpets it as more personal. Radar Bros. leader Jim Putnam, however, has actually sought to make his band's fifth CD, Auditorium, less personal. "I kind of wanted to write more obvious, literal type stuff," he told me recently. "A lot of times people will say, 'What the hell is that song about?' And I'll say, 'It's obvious,' and they'll say, 'No it isn't.'" Radar Bros. songs were never about the lyrics, anyway. Putnam doesn't do a whole lot of singing in the first place, and when he does he has a way of making simple words difficult to understand. Instead, the band focuses on its huge sonic landscapes, which permit the listener to burrow into-- or, at worst, fall asleep inside of-- whichever little part they feel most comfortable.

But this time around Putnam wants a stronger musician/listener connection, so Auditorium gives us songs like "Brother Rabbit", which memorializes a boring day hanging out in the yard with the dog. "I'm going to sit here/ I'm going to whittle away on an old green chair/ You're going to sit there/ And you're going to watch the paint gently flake away," he sings. Perhaps this is a political statement of sorts, but he gets more overt on "Happy Spirits", which concerns George Bush and slain soldiers: "These things you say make it all right/ But happy spirits make to the sky." "A Dog Named Ohio" alludes-- duh-- to election fraud. This type of lyricism is at best preaching to the choir and at worst completely irrelevant, making you wish you still had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Which leaves us with those signature Radar Bros. horizontal melodies, which consist mainly of echoing, inoffensive electric guitar and metronomic drums, and add up to bong-hitting mood music that makes Putnam's side project, Mt. Wilson Repeater, sound absolutely giddy by comparison. Though recorded at Putnam's L.A.-area home, Auditorium would have made a great soundtrack for the Oregon-set, quasi-mystical, earth-worshipping movie Old Joy. Like that film, the band's measured, washing melodies always feel like they're heading somewhere but rarely seem to arrive. In a way, Putnam is the anti-Ben Bridwell, trying his damndest to avoid cliché and displays of emotion, to the detriment of any real tension. It's a bit of an affectation, one suspects, because from time to time Putnam betrays himself by actually getting excited, such as on "Watching Cows" which-- despite its innocuous subject matter-- climaxes nicely, both musically and lyrically. Suffice it to say, he really envies those fucking cows.