2008 Woodie Awards
Album Review - Yours To Keep
Peter Crist
Issue date: 1/16/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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 | Yours To Keep Albert Hammond, Jr. Rough Trade Records  |
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- In Transit (CD track 2)
- Everyone Gets A Star (CD track 3)
- Scared (CD Track 8)
Debut solo album from Strokes guitarist is full of upbeat, poppy tunes. Influence from his original band is occasionally apparent in guitar layering and frantic rhythm, but Hammond has a songwriting style that is all his own, along with a penchant for under-appreciated instruments.
"All these dreams aren't fake, they're real, not impossible." So begins our journey into Albert Hammond, Jr.'s music with the drifting lullaby "Cartoon Music for Superheroes." Hammond manages to be passionately passive as he ponders his way through years as a young adult with a wistful demeanor, perhaps worn out by the mess of confusion generated by this modern age, but fortunately not jaded by its absurdity and insincerity. At times surreal, poignant, and pensive, his songs live in a dreamy world where the sun always shines, even when the rain is coming down.
The glowing, layered guitars on the rhythmic track "In Transit" swiftly and excitedly carry the obstinate yet optimistic tune across a sonic rainbow. "I went too far, that's all I've got to say," Hammond sings over a shimmering synthesizer, lamenting but not apologizing for an apparent upsetting of the fairer sex.
This preoccupation with the ladies continues as Hammond marvels at their mystery and contradictions while being self-consciously deceptive in his efforts to sway them his way. On the early morning riser "Bright Young Thing," he requests, "You're pretty, won't you come play with me, this time I'll be nice," before promising, "You can't trust what I say to you, I know they're all lies. Do you?" The crisply-divided, cascading guitar plucks are as clean-cut as Hammond's style of dress, which often consists of at least a vest and tie if not a fully professional business suit.
"Everyone Gets A Star" builds layers upon layers of guitar, bass, and hi-hat, drops off suddenly into a single six string and thumping toms, crescendoes into a combobulated chorus, and cuts out again into just a blinking guitar and tip-tapping cymbal. "I know it gets so confusing, sometimes it all seems to drag me down. Then when I'm getting closer, so close everything falls apart," is one of the several vague-but-relevant lines Hammond delivers on his freshman album. Hammond himself gets a star for giving us a unique hodgepodge of instruments as he incorporates keyboards, hand claps, horns, and even the long-lost-since-second-grade-music-class xylophone.
In the bouncy Caribbean island ditty "Call an Ambulance," Hammond considers the social dynamics of the male-female interactions that many of us college students are all too familiar with. He admits his nervousness along with his desperate territorialism over women that he cares for or at least wants to care for (or sleep with). Judging from the title as well as the lyrics, we're dealing with a serious issue here, but the music itself carries the tune in a different direction and brings to mind the playfulness of Kermit the Frog on a sunlit lily pad. In fact, that's a lot of the essence of the album: there's the whole smorgasbord of emotions, particularly those that rear their heads in relationships, but there's an overlying cheeriness to it all.
We eventually get a small taste of sadness on the beautiful and melancholy standout "Scared." A wavering guitar haunts the song like a ghost, supernaturally floating in and out above muted beats and buzzing snare drum, but the sober mood lasts only until the end of the song. Hammond quickly lifts the spirits with the next track, "Holiday."
With a rookie singer/songwriter ("rookie" in terms of recorded material) and just three full-time musicians, Yours To Keep occasionally sounds a lot like an even-more-low-fi-than-usual Strokes record. The similarity is to be expected; Hammond has already risen to fame as an ax-man for the New York band. "I'm free from it all," he says on one of the best tracks. Let's just hope that "all" doesn't include The Strokes because, without a doubt, they still need him, but hopefully he'll feel loose enough to keep making records for both of his current ensembles.
The basement-recording quality of some of the tracks like the acoustic ballad "Blue Skies," makes it seem as though he has decided to start fresh with his new band and avoid the big-time studio sound, but he's not too sure of himself yet; the bittersweet lyric "In time, you will forget me, and I'll try and do the same," may simply be for an old friend, but it could just as easily be his anxiety for the fate of his solo music career. Is the angst warranted? Nah. If Yours To Keep is any indication, Mr. Hammond's future at the helm of his own band looks as bright as his melodies.
Yours to Keep was released in the U.K. on October 9, 2006, by Rough Trade Records. New Line Records will release the album in the U.S. on March 6, 2007.
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