{"id":674,"date":"2013-11-05T11:23:25","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T11:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=674"},"modified":"2013-11-05T11:23:25","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T11:23:25","slug":"music-review-schooner-neighborhood-veins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=674","title":{"rendered":"Music Review: Schooner “Neighborhood Veins”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Schooner\"Schooner<\/a> Neighborhood Veins<\/i> Potluck Foundation<\/a><\/p>\n

Halfway through the third or fourth listen of the opening track of this excellent album, I nearly got overwhelmed by its magic balance of soaring beauty and heartbreak.\u00a0 The effect is simple in principle and difficult in execution: smart and emotionally invested lyrics meet multilayered music based on old school rock \u2018n\u2019 roll songwriting that borrows freely from country traditions. We\u2019re talking the lessons of the 1950s and 1960s here, people, but don\u2019t let me mislead you into thinking this is some kind of retro project: the music is as twenty-first century as the interference in your speakers from an incoming text message. Songs build and swell, and they fade away; they recede to a single instrument as they blend into the next one, and the next wave builds all over again.\u00a0 Schooner\u2019s music celebrates the life it\u2019s living even while acknowledging the difficulties and pains it has to endure: \u201cI must go now\/ to wade through clothes \/ that have no bodies, \/ but there is hope. There is hope.\u201d The small and perfect baritone sax part on \u201cStill in Love\u201d might be worth the price of the album just on its own, and if it isn\u2019t, it at least tells you what you need to know about how much the band\u2019s paying attention to the details and textures of its arrangements. Neighborhood Veins<\/i> has been a long time coming\u2014the last full-length Schooner album was Hold on Too Tight<\/i> in 2007, and the last thing longer than a single was the EP Duck Kee Sessions <\/i>in 2010\u2014but lord, don\u2019t you love it when, in the midst of your agony of looking for so long out the window, the friend you\u2019ve been waiting for finally turns the corner and comes down the street towards your house? And when she gets there, the love you share is even bigger than than the last time you were together?<\/p>\n

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