Night Beds - Ivywild

When it comes to making an album, an artist doesn't owe their fans anything. I've argued this point numerous times when dealing with entitled fans—listeners who get upset about a band's shift in sound because it doesn't gel with the nostalgic notions they have about that band. Interestingly, though, most people who do defend this argument won't give credence to the flip side, which is that a fan doesn't owe an artist respect or attention when those sonic shifts do take place. On countless occasions, I've actually seen fans talk down to listeners who didn't "get" a band's new sonic direction, playing the "real fan" card and acting like supporting an artist indiscriminately, regardless of the music they choose to make, is the "noble" thing to do.

I've struggled to write this review, because I don't like panning things or writing off an artist's leap of faith as a failure. I didn't want to come across as a snobbish asshole, as so many music critics do, or to seem like I had dismissed Night Beds' second LP—titled Ivywild—simply because it wasn't Country Sleep Part II. As a result, I kept diving back in, trying to find something to latch onto, to make this album "click" and resonate with me. Eventually, I came to the following conclusion: Ivywild is an unlistenable mess, an album so long, unwieldy, and misguided that not even my love for Country Sleep can make me try to justify it. Let's just call a spade a spade: this album sucks.

The most commonly cited anecdote about Ivywild is going to be that Winston Yellen—Night Beds' honey-voiced frontman and mastermind—decided to break away from his past work after listening to Kanye West's Yeezus in the wake of a bad break-up. The disjointed, rage-fueled, and "physical" sound of Yeezus convinced Yellen that he was "tired of being a sad sack like Elliott Smith or Ryan Adams" (an actual quote from the artist himself) and that he wanted to make a record of "sad sex jams." To Yellen's credit, Ivywild certainly doesn't sound anything like Ryan Adams—a notable departure from Country Sleep, which often sounded too much like Ryan Adams. It doesn't sound anything like Yeezus either, though, aside from maybe a few similarities to "Blood on the Leaves," or to the Justin Vernon portions of "Hold My Liquor." Instead, Ivywild bears its similarities to modern R&B: The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Miguel, and maybe a bit of 20/20 Experience-era Justin Timberlake.

None of these comparisons are "bad" per se. While I neither like nor respect the Weeknd, I've certainly been a proponent of much of the music that Frank Ocean and Miguel have put out, and I was a pretty vocal fan of The 20/20 Experience back in 2013. On paper, in other words, this project doesn't sound that bad. A folk artist making an R&B album is eyebrow-raising, to be sure, but Yellen showed a real talent for making atmospheric nighttime tunes on Country Sleep, and his sweet and smooth tenor voice could feasibly work in virtually any style of music.

On record, though, everything that sounds intriguing about Ivywild falls down like a house of cards. Even by the most modest expectations, this album is a failure. The biggest problem is that Yellen doesn't seem to have any idea how to actually make a record in this genre. Country Sleep was a debut, but songs like "Cherry Blossoms," "Ramona," and "TENN" felt completely authentic, earning attention thanks to Yellen's emotional conviction, his talent for crafting memorable melodies, and his gift for creating hair-raising climactic moments within his music. None of those talents carry over here, and as a result, Ivywild often feels more like a parody of modern R&B and dance music than it does a respectable entry in either genre.

The issue is that, in trying to leave behind the "run-of-the-mill sad-sack bullshit" of his past, Winston Yellen has completely forgotten how to write a compelling song. Usually, his version of R&B consists of making weird sexual remarks or repeating the same line over and over and over and over again. For instance, lead single "Me, Liquor, and God" is more or less just the title line sung ad nauseam, Yellen's voice chopped up with autotune and effects and laid over a bed of buzzsaw synths. Also apparently worthy of repetition are lyrics like "You didn't have a right mind/You didn't have a good time" (in "Tide Teeth"), "Give me love in the darkness" (in "Seratonin"), "All that, all that, all that, all shit/All that, all that, all that, bullshit!" (in "[9_6] Slack-Jaw"), and my personal favorite, "E A I O U/Eve A, I fuck you" (in "Eve A"). Indeed, the best thing you can say about the lyrics on this album is that at least a super creepy sexual come-on like "If I give all my time/Can I live in your thighs?" (an actual line from "Seratonin") doesn't get the repeat-until-your-face-explodes treatment.

To be fair, Yellen has always been a fairly humorless songwriter. "Cherry Blossoms," arguably his best song, features the lyric "In the mirror, I watch myself cry," and means it. But Ivywild is so remarkably colorless, joyless, and directionless that it's difficult to make it through all 66 minutes without at least kind of feeling like you never want to hear Winston Yellen's voice again. Most of the songs sound similar—similar tempos, similar spacey vibes, similar computerized drumbeats, similar anguished moans from Yellen, similar dull and meandering song structures—and about 75% of them wander haplessly and drunkenly in search of something resembling a melody.

That's not to say Ivywild is all bad: "Me, Liquor, and God" is a competent (if repetitive) single, the production is strong and enveloping throughout, and closing track "Stand on My Throat" is actually an enjoyable slice of muted Peter Gabriel-esque balladry. But so much about this project is off-putting, from Yellen writing off some of his biggest influences (and a style of music that the fans of his debut obviously enjoy) as "sad-sack bullshit," to the way opening track "Finished" (an aimless avant-garde web of computerized effects, sweeping strings, and Yellen's voice) actively tries to alienate listeners who were expecting something along those lines again. (When I played "Finished" for my sister, I believe her words were "What the hell is this shit?")

Look, I respect Winston Yellen, at very least, for being ambitious and for being willing to take a risk this big. He doesn't owe me anything for listening to Country Sleep, for giving it an 8.0 on this very site, or for encouraging other people to check out his music. If he wants to alienate his fans and write music that—in my opinion—does not display his considerable talents, that's his prerogative. But once again, it's also not my responsibility as a fan to agree with his decision, or to pretend that I find Ivywild listenable, let alone enjoyable. To be frank, I can't remember a time where I so thoroughly hated an artist's second album after so genuinely enjoying their first. So I guess, until further notice, I'll just consider myself among the alienated.

Night Beds - Country Sleep

Night Beds - Country Sleep

Dead Oceans, 2013

8.0/10

That’s certainly the case with Night Beds, the musical project of Nashville singer/songwriter Winston Yellen and the name behind Country Sleep, my personal favorite album of the year so far. Yellen and I must come from similar schools on the notion of musical familiarity, as nearly every moment of Country Sleep echoes with some glimmer of sonic nostalgia, some shred of homage to the vast collective of influences he gathers throughout. But unlike another early 2013, homage-fueled record (the Rolling Stones/Beatles/Elvis/Velvet Underground collision that is Foxygen’s We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic) , Country Sleep never crosses the line into obvious reference. Ultimately, listeners will hear what they want to in these songs, whether it’s hushed atmospherics in the vein of Cold Roses-era Ryan Adams (see “22”), or earnest, sentimental bombast, a la Sleeping At Last (the sweeping romance of “Even If We Try”).

Still though, Night Beds does a terrific job of weaving borrowed sounds and textures into a vision that is thoroughly his own. Few will miss the way Yellen’s reverb-drenched vocals recall older My Morning Jacket records, or how the echoing a cappella of “Faithful Heights” and the dizzying vocal harmony of “Even If We Try” feel appropriated directly from the Fleet Foxes playbook, but those familiar pieces are merely threads in a much larger tapestry. Country Sleep, as a whole, is a condensation of Nashville sounds, from the stark singer/songwriter confessional that is “Was I For You?” to the propulsive indie-folk-pop of “Ramona” (and if The Lumineers can latch onto the mainstream, the latter can certainly follow suit). “Borrowed Time,” meanwhile, balances the longing of Appalachian folk with the rollicking, boozy drive of something you might hear at Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe. And album closer, “TENN,” is a timelessly nostalgic lullaby, a softly-strummed ‘song for the road’ whose wandering troubadour aesthetic gives the record its perfect coda.

All of Yellen’s best qualities coalesce on “Cherry Blossoms,” a trancelike piece of midnight balladry that at once feels both heartbreaking and euphoric. The song, like much of Country Sleep, is a sonic feast, Yellen’s gorgeous vocals padded and buffeted by a cloud of harmonies, a subtle electric guitar arrangement and the moan of a memory-laden pedal steel rounding out the symphony. The song crescendos as it goes, filling out in sound with each passing second until the whole thing boils over. Yellen’s voice leaps an octave, his repeated cries of the words “take me home” rising emotionally over the feast of sounds. And then, far too soon, it’s over.

“Cherry Blossoms,” and indeed, the entirety of Country Sleep, plays out like a musical vortex, a song and album so beautifully written, so meticulously recorded and produced, and so passionately performed by its creator, that it’s impossible not to be swept away by it. Undoubtedly, there will be listeners who write Yellen off as no more than the sum of his influences. But while Ryan Adams, Jim James, Robin Pecknold, Justin Vernon, Gram Parsons, Conor Oberst and so many more are probably at least partially responsible for making Yellen the songwriter he is today, the guy has a gift that can’t be learned through simple imitation. It’s something that can’t be faked by ProTools or brought in with session musicians, something that can’t be paid for in promotion or acquired through positive critical reception. And I’m not even entirely sure what that is. Maybe it’s the intimacy on display here, the emotional honesty of it all; perhaps it’s the confident variations in sound inherent throughout, or the sonic splendor of the finished product. Or maybe, it all comes down to Yellen’s warm and welcoming embrace of familiar territory. Regardless of the reason, Country Sleep is more immediately accessible and rewarding than most of the records from the artists listed above, a stunning surprise debut that will be sitting somewhere in my annual top ten come December. Until then, though, I’ll just flip the record over and play it again.

On a lot of occasions, music lovers get to a point in their listening evolution where they start to rebel against the familiar. I’ve always found that interesting, since when we first start falling in love with music, it’s the songs and albums that we can relate to things we already love that click with us most easily. And I’ve always remained like that to a certain extent, something that will never make me the “hippest” music writer in town, but also something I’m really not at all ashamed of. I still have an emotional allegiance to the genres that made me fall in love with music in the first place, and frankly, I probably always will. Alt-country, folk, roots rock: these sounds were my entry point, the hallmarks of bands like Counting Crows or The Wallflowers that transfixed me as a child, and they remain the sounds that can hook me faster than just about anything else in music today. Because sometimes, familiarity doesn’t have to be derivative or uninspired or forgettable; sometimes, it just feels like home.