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Mark Robinson’s new guitar pop album Canada’s Green Highways is reviewed.

In the halcyon days of our youth, some of us remember the bitter taste of a shitty album after three brilliant efforts. Whatever the regrettable reason for such lapses, it mars our future music buying. We may even fall prey to paranoia that another favorite band will do the unforgiveable and release a raging slab of rancid dogmeat in place of a decent album. Which is not to say that I expect, or hope, each artist will release exactly the same record for twenty years. But a bit of paranoia goes a long way in averting stupid shit and so here we are, with much trepidation and the fleeting glow of expectation.

For those of us with a predisposition to paranoia to begin with, greeting the demise of a band and then the later reconstitution of related bands with blind faith and enthusiasm is plain impossible, and, frankly, very dumb. It was frightening to buy the first Portastatic album after years of playing the Superchunk albums on disenfranchised weekends. It was hard to buy Breeders albums or Frank Black’s solo work and not make the obvious comparisons to the Pixies, not conjecture as to what Kim Deal would have made the Pixies sound like if she had been given carte blanche. And there will always be the lingering suspicion that somebody found God or stopped finding alcohol or thought they had found alcohol but had instead found God, and that the album in my hands at the cash register will attest to that experience. And I don’t really have the time to listen to another fucking finding-the-light based recording.

Mark Robinson’s recorded with a range of outfits over the years, and somehow I had him (in my mind) grouped with Stephin Merritt from Magnetic Fields et al. and Robert Scott from the Bats. Or the Belle & Sebastian of their debut Tigermilk or the Smiths or The Field Mice. It always seemed to me that his ear was the one attuned to pop, that his influence in bands was to make the songs intelligent and infectious. His recent solo album Canada’s Green Highways marginally supports this view. More precisely, the latter half of the album attests to Mr. Robinson’s abilities as a songwriter and his ear for pop melodies, song texture, and smart, minimalist lyrics. The former half of Canada’s Green Highways attest more to Mr. Robinson’s taste for minimalist arrangements and cryptic lyrics.

What is singular about this album is Mark Robinson’s structuring alluring pop melodies and tuneful vocals over an insistent, punk-sounding guitar. Sometimes the songs feel too loosely sketched, and they pop like bubbles before much can happen. But halfway through Mr. Robinson is more sure of his material and the songs benefit from judicious application of synthesizer lines and loping instrumental stretches (as in the last two tracks, Sylvan Cote and Arlington Station). This is an album that made me think most of the Belle & Sebastian debut Tigermilk, an album with ups and downs, promise and moments of grandeur. Particularly, I liked the the last two tracks, “Misplaced on the Kitchen Floor” and “Wonderful”. These songs are lush pop numbers, similar in spirit to Stephin Merritt when he is recording pop songs and not self-conscious cabaret shit or black angel country psychedelia or whatever. It’s an interesting approach, the slightly jarring guitar against the hushed vocals, the oblique lyrics, and occasional keyboards. The handful of times it comes together, you drift off with the song, staring around like a schoolboy. You start wondering what Canada’s Green Highways refers to, or why a DC-based musician would release an album with that name and pictures of himself feverishly enjoying grapes and donning deutsche chapeau.

There is always a temptation to begin deconstructing the album, trying hard to listen to the empty places and feel and see what is going on. One song has these lyrics:
Angels in waiting,
Angels, y’know

Another contains the tender advice:
Never wash the pollen
Off a bee’s behind

And maybe this ought to tell me something. There are clear avenues for a series here: Pennsylvania’s Black Coal Mines; Antarctica’s White Glaciers; Smoky Mountains and Moonshine; Norway’s Watery Fjords. But I am missing the point.

Mark Robinson’s new album is uneven. It is not breathtaking. But it does evidence a new approach to pop music, and it glistens in places. There is little mention of liquor God or relationships, failed or blossoming. These are oblique songs, delivered as such, and most days I feel like oblique songs that let me drift and jar me back to the frayed fabric of my seat only gently.

Entertainment guitar, music review, pop album