The Autumn Defense : Once Around

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/theautumndefenseoncearound.jpg" alt=" " />So sweet it doesn't have to rock. ...
7.4 Yep Roc
2010 

The Autumn Defense : Once Around Ever since rock first rolled, we’ve all been taught that that’s the first principle of rock: ‘to rock’.  Yes, there’s been countless other ways of doing things, from stripped soul to atmospheric expanse, but the rock is the foundation upon which everything else is based.  So when bands go soft, it’s often derided as, well, ‘going soft’.  Some of that is undoubtedly true – witness hair metal ballads – but it doesn’t have to be the case.  Soft sounds can be so sweet & enjoyable that you don’t care that they don’t rock, like The Autumn Defense’s Once Around.

Composed of John Stirratt and Pat Sansone (QRO interview), a.k.a. stage left of alt-country stars Wilco (QRO live review), The Autumn Defense is often viewed as a ‘Wilco side-project’, where Stirratt gets a chance to stretch out, away from the dominance of the only other continual Wilco member, singer/guitarist/frontman Jeff Tweedy.  However, music critics all don’t want to be that lazy & similar in the commentary, so they invariably fall back on comparing The Autumn Defense’s sweet soft-rock to the band that defined seventies soft-rock, Bread.  While both comparisons are hardly out of left field or unapt, there’s more to the Defense’s sound, if you lie back and listen.

Starting with the smooth, Beatles-esque “Back of My Mind”, Once Around never rocks, but is consistently enjoyable from start to finish.  Compared to their last, 2007’s very autumnal self-titled release (QRO review), Once Around is more varied, with the softer tracks softer, the more upbeat tracks more upbeat.  In general, the upbeat tracks can’t help but be the standouts, such as “Tell Me What You Want” and “The Swallows of London Town”, while some of the mellower pieces get forgettable (like “The Rift” or “Step Easy”).  And there’s a definite sixties/seventies troubadour-ness to the Anglophile bent of the record, not just “London Town” but the Piccadilly Square-meets-Renaissance Fair “Huntington Fair”, or the darker forest following title track.  But then Once Around does some of its best work at the end, with “Don’t Know” the finest of the sad songs, “Every Day” brightening after the dark, and “There Will Always Be a Way” introducing a chillness that the album actually could have used more of.

The Autumn Defense does not ‘rock’, and neither does Once Around (it’s also not Wilco).  But the sweet sounds are so sweet you don’t care – not that you really need to.

MP3 Stream: “The Swallows of London Town”

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