Sam Prekop, Sam Prekop

In the interest of variety, it�s only fair that I follow one Sea & Cake member�s solo effort with another member�s. Upon my first few listens, this album was greeted with the reductive verdict of "Sea & Cake Lite" (if such a thing is possible) or maybe "More Organic Sea & Cake". It certainly does flow naturally from Sea & Cake�s ouevre--some of its songs have made it onto my S&C mixes--and certainly the vocal stylings are similar and immediately recognizable, but what if the comparisons ended there? What if Sam Prekop�s distinctive voice and subdued strummings were the only thing linking this unassuming little album to the Chicago post-rock juggernaut? Because I think that may just be the case.

Like Prekop�s watercolors on the cover, this music is muted, discreet, and could easily warble away in the background of a coffee shop or a painters� studio without raising any heads. Anyone familiar with his vocal sound can immediately see how it fits in nicely with this aesthetic. But there are surprises under the album�s tranquil surface, like the brass cacaphony that accumulates atop the percussive ostinatos of �Faces And People�, or Chad Taylor�s crisp drum fill that opens the album, or the endearingly kitschy violin sweeps that close it. Still, this album isn�t going to wake anyone who�s already asleep, and that�s what drew me to it during the drowsy early spring of my senior year in college. The instrumental �Smaller Rivers� sounds like it was designed for, and perhaps performed by, people drifting in and out of consciousness. The beautiful string fadeout at the end of �Practice Twice� is equal parts plaintive and calming. Like most of my favorite music, these songs tread a fine line between that which haunts and that which comforts.

To wit, then: I got this album five years ago, around the same time I began an ill-advised Lithium regimen that was prescribed in response to what, in retrospect, was probably acute senioritis coupled with transition anxiety in the face of my imminent graduation and explusion from the warm confines of academia. At the time, however, I was in pretty bad shape, and I was willing to try something new. Here�s the thing, though: No one wants to go on Lithium. It has sinister, archaic connotations, and it�s the last pharmaceutical resort for depressives--if this doesn�t work, what then? I didn�t want to consider the answer. It�s an old drug, a medieval precursor to the stylish SSRIs and MAOIs of the 1990s, and it�s a goddamn metal, for Christ�s sake. That�s metal you�re putting in your body. Metal�s not supposed to go there.

I wasn�t on the stuff one week before my system raised a unified, vociferous protest: I had to constantly suck down water if I didn�t want to become dizzy with dehydration, I could barely sleep, I had the jitters, alcohol was out of the question, I lost my appetite entirely. This was all par for the course, I was told, as was the biweekly bloodwork I had to have performed at the hospital to ensure that the very same agent designed to balance my neurochemical activity wasn�t also poisoning my blood. If this was all normal, then I wanted no part of it. I made an executive decision to discontinue that particular component of my pharmacological schedule, and decided that I was willing to try a little harder to suck it up and make ends meet with the far tamer, less taboo Zoloft. And that was that.

So Sam Prekop's mellifluous sound was a pretty sharp contrast to the external circumstances and physiological state in which I experienced it. It provided some small antidote to the sleepless nights, the occasional vomiting, the short attention span. In the years since, it can usually be heard during a short nap when a Sunday afternoon in winter renders me too uninspired, too bored to do much else. I know that I listened to it more than once the day that Gwen died: in a sort of volunatry paralysis, I was loath to take any decisive action or make any movement lest I break something, commit grievous errors, cause everyone more distress. It�s a strange musical companion for a perennial condition that is at best a drowsy apathy and at worst a debilitating ennui. But it works, so I guess I�ll stick with it until I find something better.

0 Comments

Back & Forth