by Sean Fennell (@seanrfennell)
Ooh-la-la’s and a gentle croon and “baby” and *cringe*. The love song has been around since pop music itself. For a long time, it was pop music, but is that still the case? Sure, love is an emotion slithering its way through every record from nearly every artist, but it is rarely the be all, end all. Love is more often slathered in layers of metaphor and symbolism, a device used for self-reflection, small intricacies standing in for large ideas or vice-versa. Gone are the days of “Love, love me do”, which is why Eric Slick’s decision to make a love album, a top-to-bottom expression of sweet, childish, jealous, insecure, saccharine love, is so refreshing. It’s not cool to wear your heart on your sleeve, but Wiseacre isn’t concerned with aloof nonchalance. Slick lays it all out there, professing time and again his love for his wife and fellow musician Natalie Prass, and finds something new to say about this kind of love, closely examining the way we accept, deflect, obscure and ultimately, face it.
Wiseacre starts where all love starts, a desperate longing to be accepted. “I’m a simple person” Slick sings, and aren’t we all? All we need is constant, undying affirmation and affection, simple as that. It’s made plain from the get, the opening drumroll of “When It Comes Down To It” playing the part of genial host, inviting you into Wiseacre’s world of bubbly grooves, sugary choruses, and flimsy self-worth. This is the start of something, where self-doubt and “maybes” litter the lyric sheet. “Children” further explores this aching vulnerability, it’s floating, lilting chorus bringing to mind a golden-hour on a jungle gym with an ice-pop running down your chin and a skinned knee that needs a kiss. Yearning is childish and so it is innate and so it is nothing to be ashamed of, Slick asserts, even as we age past a time when yearning is in style.
So love is taking shape, great! As we all know, this is the perfect time to freak out and self-sabotage. Also, it turns out, time to write the best song on the record. “Closer To Heaven” examines what it’s like when you take a good relationship and relentlessly try to make it the perfect relationship, that ideal heavenly place of peace and contentment. With the help of Prass on vocals and Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken’s songwriting assistance (Slick plays drums for Dr. Dog), Slick nearly gets there. This is without a doubt the grooviest song on Wiseacre and, with its breezy string arrangement and its wonderfully contradictory screeched-out guitar solo, where the record gets most interesting instrumentally as well.
It’s a good thing, too, because the biggest flaw in Wiseacre is it’s sonic monotony. While Slick is able to consistently delve deep into romantic love’s intimate minutiae, it is often played against a similarly light, airy, ‘70s sheen that becomes more easy than interesting. Songs like “Closer To Heaven” and later on, “Over It,” are effective for their ability to cut through the yachty leanings of much of the record, the latter inhabiting the lower registered, seedier side of Wiseacre - think a late night drizzle, neon signs, and a long line for a crowded bar. This is the risk you run when you adhere too closely to a thesis, as does Slick throughout the record, but, ultimately, it doesn’t cripple Wiseacre, if only for how effectively he is able to follow through on the concept.
Nowhere is this more apparent than “Someday,” a beautiful, sweeping summation, replete with dreamy, montage piano and whistling, rose-colored synths. Specifics punctuate Wiseacre, but “Someday” is different, stepping back further and further till what once seemed like monumental moments are now simply awash in the canvas of the whole. This is total acceptance of each existential annoyance that’s popped along the way, a recognition of love and life and all that comes with it, including, ultimately, the end. Love may be trite, but you can't help but fall for it.