Sad Songs Say So Much
A Review of Attention to Detail

By Mark Kirby (more articles from this author) 2008-03-01

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There are no accidents. This lesson was reinforced recently when I was procrastinating from my assigned job of reviewing Daryle Stephen Ackerman's new CD Attention To Detail. I was playing an obscure 1974 record called Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy, featuring Brian Eno, fresh from his stint in Roxy Music, and the trippy wizard from Canterbury, England, Kevin Ayers. This record is art rock par excellence that is heavily influenced by the British pub/music hall tradition, whose sing-along style is a cornerstone of the music of Paul McCartney (think of the Beatles' "Honey Pie" and Wings' "Band on the Run") and John Cale (the Velvet Underground). I put Ackerman's songs on the same playlist and didn't notice when they started playing. They blended with Lady June's cuts seamlessly.

Attention to Detail has the vocal and instrumental sound and the grassroots sophistication of the above artists. Ackerman's songs have Ayers' dark singsong quality and his voice has Cale's world-weary gruffness, which gives him a certain gravitas that separates him from the legion of hipster indie rockers that excite a minor subculture with forced awkwardness, whiney emotionalism, and nerdiness-as-style. Don't get me wrong: Napoleon Dynamite is a genuinely cute little movie and the Violent Femmes are cool for just being themselves, unlike the legion which buys its identity and culture right off the department store rack.

Does this writer sound like an old curmudgeon? No doubt, but I like my musicians sincere, with something to say that is worth listening to, and with skills enough to say it. Daryle Stephen Ackerman has written, produced, and performed an album that fits the bill. This is rock 'n' pop for people who are not fresh out of college, who want something they can relate to. This record has a modern sound yet could just as easily have been done at any time in the last thirty years (though perhaps not in America). The songs are about timeless topics like love, the weight of life, and relationships gone south, north and sideways.

"Gave It My All" is a song about true romantic weariness mixed with a desperate hope that cuts close to the bone: "Too many chances were just fleeting romances 'til there's nothing left for me / I can't drive so I just sit and let the cars pass me by / I can't lie but I can't tell the truth to save my own hide ... get up and fight 'cause somewhere out there must be something that's right / get out tonight 'cause there must be someone to take me to the light." Holla if you're a single romantic dude who wants redemption from loneliness and despair. "Hillary Tuck" is pure and open many romanticism, and the most catchy tune on the record. "The Mississippi Flows" is a lush soft rock tune - I mean that in a good way - with fuzzy guitar and acoustic piano playing an off beat lick that shows a sophistication that is, sadly, no longer present in popular music.

This record is an actual album, not just a collection of songs. I mean that in the old school sense of exploring and developing a theme. The subjects of the songs go from love ("Hillary Tuck") to love lost ("Tear My Heart in Two") to an attempt at emotional avoidance (the unmacho "One Night Stand Man") to romantic longing ("Run Away With Me"). The entire album is meant for sitting and listening and has the quality of wintery introspection depicted on the CD cover, which shows Ackerman standing alone in a snow-covered yard.

The final cut sums up the entire record and reminds one of a truism that applies to love and other aspects of life: when one door closes another one opens. "It's Not the End" explores the complexity of a break up but one that occurs later in life: "I want to know how hard you tried / ... because I've been down this road before / many a time / and I have to know what was your state of mind / don't turn your back on your best friend / cause I believe that it's not the end / when I look out / on this life / It seems increasingly hard to believe that you're not my wife / cause I thought it was established that you would be mine / cause I thought we agreed on this for all time / don't turn your back on your best friend / cause I believe that it's not the end." The song is driven by raw and insistent drums - organic-sounding despite being made by a machine - piano, synth bass, and colored by organ. Ackerman's voice has the horse quality of one that has been discussing, then screaming, then finally pleading, a cycle all too familiar to the unlucky in love. A plaintive soprano sax solo - expressing simple guy vulnerability - ties it all together.

Attention to Detail shows a mature songwriter at the height of his powers. It also shows the importance of the internet, because without it, one could never find a guy in British Columbia making music this good, and he, not being a teeny bopper from the Disneyland school of pop, would be hard pressed to be heard.

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