New Misery by Cullen Omori

When a band goes through a messy divorce, you often get a clean division of communal artistic property. The ensuing rivalry, whether spoken or unspoken, typically pits the eccentric against the centrist—see Mars Volta vs. Sparta, Lennon vs. McCartney, Wilco vs. Son Volt, or Andre 3000 vs. Big Boi. For those who must choose sides in following the dissolution of Smith Westerns, which saw former guitarist Max Kakacek breaking off from the band to form Whitney, an immediate tonal difference can be identified: Whitney plays breezy AM radio-indie; Lead singer Cullen Omori made a solo record and called it New Misery. So it’s up to Omori to further the emotional trajectory the Smith Westerns established over their three LPs. While they grew from reckless, glam-punk wunderkinds to the verge of maturity, the best Smith Westerns songs (“Weekend," “All Die Young”) were the sound of young men seeing their golden days dissolving in front of their eyes in real time. Their success was enviable by just about any standard, but now that the smoke has cleared, Omori is now saddled with the expected problems of someone who skipped college to be in a modestly popular rock band: financial instability and a lack of marketable skills. There are points here where Omori directly invokes his previous band’s rep as hedonist brats amongst the genteel indie rock acts that defined the early part of the decade, but his malaise is typically drawn broadly enough to not offend the specifics of any quarter-life crisis. “Wrote a letter to my former self/ Saying ‘thanks for knowing when to give up’,” he smirks on “No Big Deal,” speaking to the regrets and fear recognizable to anyone who invested their formative years in something that left them unprepared to face the future. Sure, an early highlight of New Misery is a sleepwalk of drowsy harmonies and slide guitar reminiscent of All Things Must Pass. But its sentiment is a far more cynical rendering of the same idea: “And Yet the World Still Turns.” Omori has never been the most personal songwriter, so the context of New Misery gives an easy entry and a new way to experience a style that has remained mostly intact since Soft Will. Very little of it can be described as “rock,” none of it as “punk,” the result of Omori trying to emulate the top 40 music he’d hear in hospitals while working with a medical supply company. New Misery provides sturdy melodies throughout; as with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, Omori’s voice ensures that he’ll always approach pop sounding like a classic rock throwback, though he doesn’t have the same taste for adventure or sonic precision. New Misery’s filler doesn’t lie in the songs themselves, but rather within them, the predictable indulgences of both solo albums and transitions from guitar to synthesizers. The instrumental sections that of “And Yet the World Still Turns” and “Lom” meander rather than mesmerize, overdubs add distance rather than depth, Shane Stonebeck’s production slathers reverb on every instrument, turning even the coke-sniffing Drive-pop of “Cinnamon” into aural taffy. The razored leads of Kakacek were often the thing that could draw boundaries on Smith Westerns songs as they became increasingly reliant on reverb and Chris Coady’s humidified production. Omori hasn’t quite figured out how to replace them; “Poison Dart” and “Sour Silk” would be gorgeous Smith Western ballads without the time-stamped, sci-fi synths that feel like placeholders. He certainly doesn’t need any implication that Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich’s absence are palpable and sorely missed here; after all, the reception of Whitney’s Light Upon the Lake singles has them well-positioned to play afternoon festival slots for at least the next two years. But that’s where the non-musical context of New Misery comes into play—it’s a transitional album in all senses, more intent on Omori getting lost inside himself before he tries to move forward. ℗ 2016 Sub Pop Records