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Combover Beethoven
Somewhere In The Freefall
Combover Beethoven have released four albums in two years, plus a handful of other projects - the excellent Lonnie & Donnie, a collection of reimagined Discharge covers called Blind Alleys, and some one-off singles.
It’s a dizzying pace of output, but spend a bit of time with the texts (largely though not exclusively composed by the drummer and primary vocalist, Unit) and it’s clear that the group is not forcing or rushing anything. It’s just that this is an age when things need saying, and how lucky that some of the people who need to say them have a bit of musical aptitude so it comes in a tastier package than simple social media screeds.
Somewhere In the Freefall feels a bit like the closing of a loop. In a purely musical sense, Combover Beethoven have refined their approach to the point where it feels locked in. There’s a consistently forward vocal mix, allowing Unit’s delicate but emotionally profound delivery and his devastating texts to cut through. It’s one of the only reproaches possible to the masterpiece of a debut album, Borders - the fact that you really needed a lyric sheet to understand how good it was. No such impediments exist on Freefall.
The strengths remain - patience, a knack for addictive melodies, the ability to draw out the sinister, the wickedly cutting, the brutally sarcastic from the loveliest melodies without even the hint of a sneer, the deft vocal layering, the confident and effective arrangements. On Freefall it feels like there’s a bigger role for louder and angrier guitars - though it’s still used tastefully and sparingly. But the effect is a wider and more powerful dynamic range. Witness the sprawling menace it lends to “Torn Away”, the way it provides a richer denouement for the glorious, gorgeous "Singlewide”, and the way that the infectious melancholy of “Breakfast In Bed” lifts off towards the end.
Thematically as well, this feels like a loop has closed. The closing track “Empire Falls” is inescapably reminiscent of the grabby, frantic, anxious obsession over our borders, and who gets to cross them, that we explored a bit on, well, Borders. Here, despite all the best efforts of all the worst people, the walls are crumbling, the empire is dying, and the barbarians are, as predicted, through the gates - in fact, they were always here, waving the flag of the empire, calling themselves its defenders.
The first song that made me sit up and take notice of Combover Beethoven was the phenomenal “Sunday Best” - a bitter, biting anthem about our collective failure to honor our own humanity in the way we treat the stranger, the migrant, the refugee. If you’re not in the club, you’ll be buried at sea - don’t be the color of you, be the color of me goes the first refrain, perfectly encapsulating the way Unit uses understated delivery and deceptively lovely melodic attacks to convey an utter gut-punch of an idea.
In “Empire Falls” there is a lyrical callback to these images - a swarthy widow in a boat personifies the floating vote - now every heart’s at sea. It’s the story of this era in history - everything coming full circle, all the chickens coming home to roost, all the imperialism and colonialism and fascism turning inward toward the imperial seats as the maligned and mistreated and exploited masses come knocking for their share of the dream they’ve thanklessly built for us, and as the malicious reaction of our own leaders, and our own hearts, becomes the guideline for how we will now be treated by our own leaders.
We’re as utterly lost, bereft, abandoned, and endangered by this inhuman system as are the people from whom we empowered this system to “protect” us. I don’t necessarily think the lads in Combover Beethoven overthought it to this degree - though it’s certainly possible. I just think they’ve got such a pure perspective and such a sincere prophetic message to spread that it was bound to tie itself up this way.
Earlier on the album, in our favorite stretch of the record, there is a suite of songs that also serve as companions to “Sunday Best” - as well as to the magnificent “Maniacs” from the sophomore album of the same name.
“Torn Away” is a pulsating, hard-driving indictment, a wall of howling guitars over a spacey synth backdrop that mirrors the basic contrast - a class of enlightened “chosen ones” who’ve deliberately placed themselves above and outside of humankind - the Saturnalians conjuring not only the idea of some demonic belief structure but also the suggestion of the people ruling over us as literal “aliens” - versus the people who, through an accident of birth, are fitted for a prison shirt.
The track is followed by perhaps the most beautiful song on the album, the carefully constructed and endlessly patient “Singlewide”, which explores similar thematic territory from a completely different angle both sonically and lyrically.
A pure pop groove under a sweetly singing choir leads us in before Unit paints a characteristically humanist picture. It’s a simple narrative - the narrator is working, caring for his family, and looking over his shoulder. He hears talk of grander problems, existential concerns, climate catastrophe - but he has more pressing issues as he’s also looking over his shoulder for convoys and vans and wondering why this guy is giving me the eye and how am I not welcome here.
There’s also a heartbreaking acknowlegement that these people are often the most sincerely religious Christians in our society, being hounded and persecuted by nihililsts and hedonists and egotistical materialists hiding behind the veneer of Christianity. It’s a towering work of empathy, in addition to just being a beautiful song.
The symmetry with the rest of the Combover Beethoven catalog doesn’t stop there, but this is probably the most immediately recognizable echo, and happens to be the tastiest stretch of the record.
“Sand” is multi-instrumentalist Tank’s vocal contribution to the record, and feels like a companion to one of Maniac’s early singles “Moving Target”. Musically “Sand” feels utterly classic and the way Tank stretches out the end of the choruses as the climbing chords imply the weight, and simultaneously the resignation, of the text. It seems we’ve chosen to ignore what we learned from history - and until they turned up at my door, I never thought they’d come for me. It’s unnerving how on the nose, and yet how utterly inescapable, it feels. This revelation is happening, right now, to somebody, and it’s coming for all of us, one way or another.
The title track “Somewhere in the Freefall” never names names. There’s no reference to any handsome young Italian Americans who share their names with a famous video game sidekick. And there’s, crucially, zero justification or rationalization for any deeds, dirty or otherwise. Simply a character sketch that dares you to fill in the blanks. A CEO flicking his forked tongue at the flies and on the other end of his malfeasance, a headstone gets a new name because a mama couldn’t pay more.
When the narrator laments that I tried going to church, I tried going to bed, I tried getting out of my head - you can’t make them care, it may strike the listener that this story is tragically far too common to be necessarily that story. But it’s an effective coda to Lonnie & Donnie, a demonstration of where the road from unvarnished corruption and unfettered greed inevitably leads.
There are endless discoveries awaiting the listener - and as always the record rewards repeat plays. There are moments of mischief - like in “Vines” when Unit says the windows display confectionary, the bestial ever see or in the opener “What Kind of Tools?” with its prayer of give us this day our daily dread. There are riddles and puzzles to contend with - “Vines” and “Eyes Closed” both offer a defiant challenge to any listener trying to parce Unit’s intentions.
“Breakfast In Bed” stands out as the most obvious, addictive, and potentially attention-grabbing banger of the lot.
It’s all shimmering, upbeat, glorious pop. Laden with new age nostalgia and all the signatures that make Combover Beethoven unique and endearing, particularly that difficult needle that Unit threads so well - wistful melancholy, hopeful despair, beauty and pain wrapped up in a toe-tapping groove. It’s top-notch work, and it contains one of the most instantly lovable and memorable hooks in their catalog. What’s the matter with me? Been here before - again and again and again…
We hope we’ll be here many times more - as long as Combover Beethoven is here to hold our hands through it. Somewhere in the Freefall marks an excellent jumping off point for some new chapter in this partnership, or just a solid platform from which the group can mine the same ground with ever-evolving sonic tools. Either way, whatever comes next will have our full attention.
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