[rating=7.00]
Sean Carey may have spent much of his career caught in the formidable gravitational pull of the infinite mass that is Justin Vernon as “that other guy from Bon Iver”, but such designations are perhaps unfair. His solo career as S. Carey has produced a body of work that stands on its own, forcing a thin crack between himself and the Bon Iver behemoth and earning him the right to be viewed as a singular entity. Hundred Acres is now his third studio album and continues to distill the sound and atmosphere he has been refining over the years; a calming reflection on nature and the essence of peace and happiness.
It’s easy to compare S. Carey’s music to that of the more famous project for which he drums, and thus perpetuate that pigeonhole he’s been designated. Captured in its cover art’s beautiful tree, it dwells in the natural and the divine; sorrow and longing seeping from its pores even as revels in its own simple prettiness. But again, such comparisons are perhaps misguided. There’s a calm to this music that is difficult to place. As if where Bon Iver has a restlessness that always feels like it’s striving to reach for something, the music of S. Carey feels like it’s trying to let go. It’s within this that he finds his vision, as Hundred Acres – musically and lyrically – paints a soft pastel image of an idyllic life among endless skies, tumbling fields and babbling brooks. Where Carey has always visited the simple life and a need for escape, here he plants roots and seeks to stay there.
Interestingly, for a drummer, there’s a distinct lack of percussion throughout Hundred Acres. It’s rhythmic, sure, and has it’s pulsating moments like the delicate off-kilter snares of ‘Emery’ or the pounding beat that drives ‘More I See’. But on the whole this is an understated affair. In keeping with the ideals the record affirms, Carey doesn’t so much craft or build songs as grow them. Gentle layers of strummed and picked guitars are overlaid with soft piano motifs and string arrangements; his vocals breezing out pictures of lovers “waiting in rose petals” and only needing “a hundred acres and a row of seeds”. The strength of Carey’s music has always been in the subtle layers of simple instrumentation he masterfully arranges, weaving in and out of each other with barely discernible dynamic and structural shifts. While certainly more sparse, this talent permeates his latest record, in particular with centerpiece ‘Yellowstone’ as Carey’s layered voice dances with itself over a steady strum and a clean guitar line.
“No one came to take you, how could you leave?” is Carey’s quiet query on ‘Fool’s Gold’. It feels like a dual representation of his latest record. The characters of Hundred Acres have their problems of distance and conflict, but there’s a sense they could all be solved were we to take a step back and slow the world down. Which leads into the question of the human desire to leave the life of peace and tranquility we have at our feet. An idea Carey’s music spends its time mulling over and taking apart, before settling into its own life of quiet solitude. There are several moments of real emotional pull, but for the most part it never gets far beyond simple prettiness. But you get the sense S. Carey wasn’t striving for anything more than that, and that’s really OK.
