Putting The Days To Bed

We Say...

Review by Matthew Fritch

Worth the price of admission alone, “Teaspoon” is the star attraction of Putting The Days To Bed, the third full-length from the Long Winters. Like the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait,” it’s the kind of song that results from a typically left-of-the-dial band going into maximum pop overdrive: placing the hooks in plainer view, adding a horn fanfare to the back end of a chorus and driving a fat, four-note bass line into the ground. While Paul Westerberg’s tune was all about romantic longing, John Roderick — singer/guitarist for Seattle’s Long Winters — is responsible for one of the bounciest songs ever written about dreading intimacy. “Two can just bleed into one,” sings Roderick, “But only one does the bleeding.”

As with the Long Winters’ previous album, 2003’s When I Pretend To Fall, the songs here take the form of character sketches, from the retired Air Force pilot’s soliloquy “Sky Is Open” to the mother-daughter rock-groupie conversation “Honest” (“Don’t you love a singer, whatever you do”). Roderick is a close cousin to the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson: He’s going to write detailed, chin-stroking lyrics, but he’s not going to be overly precious about it; the now-stable Long Winters rhythm section of Eric Corson (bass) and Nabil Ayers (drums) helps punch up the volume and tempo of Putting The Days To Bed. Roderick, meanwhile, acts as a loutish narrator his voice brings to mind a belligerent Michael Stipe — relieving even the most lovelorn material of its maudlin sentiment. Sitting elbow-to-elbow with his Northwestern peers in Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists, Roderick may not have a major label deal but he’s the guy you’d want to share a beer and trade lies with.