Tall Tales & the Silver Lining

I've long held to the theory that there are certain intangible factors that far outweigh skill or technique in decided what music is 'good'. I've felt like there are things you can just feel about a recording that can make it truly great. I believe I can hear when a band enjoys playing together and when they don't. Either can make a record stronger, if it is recorded correctly. After all, the best music is that which incites some kind of emotional response from the listener, for good or bad.
 
That is really how words like 'pop' and 'overproduced' have come to be insults in the critic's verbal quiver. At least during my lifetime, it has seemed like the goal of pop music was to wash away all of those happy little mistakes and rough edges that give you the clues about what is going on with the song. In an effort to reach more people, producers and artists take away those little things that make the music truly great. In turn, this music ends up in the worst possible place; completely devoid of emotional investment and impossible to offer response. It's flavorless and boring. It's tap water and white bread.

Once in a blue moon, you'll come upon a record that upsets the apple cart. It is clearly pop music, but it is also unwashed, individual, and absolutely fantastic. These are the albums that save pop music from the insult bin. They prove pop music can also be fantastic music. Tightropes, the new album from Tall Tales and the Silver Lining, is that kind of album. 

Tall Tales and the Silver Lining is a Los Angeles-based band led by songwriter Trevor Beld Jimenez. Beld Jimenez grew up on the sounds of ‘70s AM radio, along with L.A. classics like Jackson Browne, Court and Spark-era Joni Mitchell, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and The Byrds. The pop lover from California likely gives you an idea of the Tall Tales sound that isn't exactly helpful however.

In recent years, we have heard a resurgence of the Laurel Canyon sound, most notably from Dawes. I wouldn't include Tightropes in that same category. Too much of that stuff is just too laid back for its own good, for my taste. Tall Tales instead finds itself more closely related to jangle pop of groups like the Go-Betweens, with a vocal delivery from Beld Jimenez that is reminiscent of newer artists like Destroyer and Blaudzen. 

But, what makes Tightropes truly more interesting than even the best original Laurel Canyon music (save maybe Warren Zevon) is that you can hear that intangible factor in the recording. Trevor sounds like he is having fun recording these tracks. That energy transfers to the listener, making songs like the album opener "Something to Believe In" everything pop music should be about; unadultered, dumb fun.

Tall Tales & the Silver Lining isn't a project that is meant to save the world. Trevor Beld Jimenez isn't trying to shed light on some major world problem or save dying puppies. Tightropes is an album of songs about girls and that is good enough. Every now and again, it's refreshing to run into music that doesn't need any pretension of being something greater to just be good. For those moments when you need the pallette cleanser, then this is the album for you.