Pitchfork

The closing track on the Strugglers' The Latest Rights is called "My Slow Reflection", and it's a title that's pretty damn emblematic of leader Randy Bickford's artistic mission as a whole. His entire aim here amounts to a deliberate examination both of clear, concrete moments and diffuse philosophical states, each impression turned over and parsed with exquisite care. The ruminative, metaphysical bent of North Carolina-based Bickford's alt-countryish musings is only emphasized by his cracked, weary voice (invariably likened to Will Oldham's, though being deeper, Bickford's instrument is often closer to Eddie Vedder's), slow-shuffling musical accompaniment, and long lyrical lines.

Bickford is fond of tracing a single thought or sketching a single image throughout the winding course of several bars, building suspense and making you wait patiently for the pay-off, which typically feels like a reward even when it's something as relatively banal as "So when are you going to turn yourself in one direction". Still, there's a pregnant pause between "in" and "one" which, when bridged, finds the sense of the phrase dramatically changed. The title track in particular is like a drawing made without once lifting the pen, its gradual coalescing perfectly mirrored in the lyrics' theme of youthful self-discovery. At times, Bickford's concerns are even more archetypal, like the elliptical but weighty considerations of beauty, mythology, and innocence that make up "Jonathan" (paradoxically the album's sprightliest and crunchiest rock offering). But it's not all vagary-- the aforementioned "My Slow Reflection" includes a line, "I was spurred always by the points in my life," that encapsulates Bickford's frequent willingness to interrupt his allusive sifting and bring out a single tangible image or fact for equivalent inspection. He does have an eye for lyrical detail, whether it's a picture of being "right in the sunlight with my eyes closed" on the war-themed "Redeployment", or the memory of "what you said when Donna's baby was born" in "New Form", which leads in short time to a more characteristically nebulous meditation on aging and the creation of identity.

Musically, The Latest Rights is occasionally distinguished by stately strings ("Morningside Heights", "Limerence") but more reliably ranges from forgettable unobtrusiveness to pleasantly self-regulating disinterest. Bickford often seems impervious to the musical shifts that go on behind him, but it only helps add to the record's sense of unheeded meandering and organic self-realization. "I'm soaking in your various shades," Bickford wearily attests on the moody, horn-graced "Theme for the Bad Angels", and it's a state to which we as listeners can relate in immersing ourselves in his subtle, ever-blurring emotional modulations. The opposite of histrionic, Bickford offers a subdued palette rich in the fineness of its distinctions.