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Slaughter Beach, Dog Find Revelation in Distance on Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling

Through hypnotic, wayfaring bouts of Americana, blues and folk rock, Jake Ewald and co. turn moods, beauty and dreams into their best album yet

By Laura Dzubay  |  September 21, 2023 | 10:30am
Music Reviews Slaughter Beach, Dog
Slaughter Beach, Dog Find Revelation in Distance on Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling

“The one I know isn’t here,” sings Jake Ewald, his voice laced by the twangs of a guitar. This line from “Surfin’ New Jersey” comes just a few seconds into Slaughter Beach, Dog’s new album, Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. The one he’s referring to remains elusive—it could be a companion, but there’s a sense that, as the album unfolds, one’s honest self may be just as hard to access. Slaughter Beach, Dog assembled at their Philadelphia studio, The Metal Shop, in July 2022 to record their fifth LP—a collection of songs Ewald had written over the past two years, after the release of At the Moonbase on Christmas Eve 2020. The band is caring towards each song, and the result is a well-crafted, half-awake dreamscape of melodic rock—with soft indie edges and more than a little folk influence.

On Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, the band starts on the outside of something and doesn’t really try to get inside—instead, they meander around out there, seeing what they can find and, from time to time, peering in through the glass. The first single—and the album’s second track—“Strange Weather,” sets up this seeking early. “How am I still unsure?” Ewald questions, across an upbeat arrangement laced with rounds of percussion and scratchy, quietly moody guitar instrumentation reminiscent of Abbey Road-era Beatles.

Slaughter Beach, Dog seem sure of their sound, at least—sometimes to a fault, as the songs here are, at times, almost in danger of blurring into one another in their sure-handedness. There’s little risk taken, but it’s hard to count that as a fault against an album that’s so comfortable within itself—and such a marvel to listen to and spend time with. The sound is consistent, but also refreshingly confident and un-self-conscious and never overworked; each of these songs knows exactly what it is.

There’s a sense of drifting across the album, a soft indie-rock escapade through city streets, small towns and diners. The songs are full of Americana imagery and richly detailed scenes vivid enough to take in—and taking them in feels incredibly easy when the music has such a gliding, soaring quality. “Engine” is one of the clearest examples—an easygoing but troubled odyssey through the desert, the woods, bars and a family reunion—as it boasts such an even-keeled rhythm of soft taps and drum beats, so much so that you might not even notice that it’s nearly nine minutes long. A confession, “The truth is I live to roll over,” tips the second half of the song into a long, brooding instrumental—mirroring the first four minutes in affect but with more friction seeping into prolonged electric guitar riffs.

Often, these songs start with a personal dynamic and then move out into a broader, almost Simon & Garfunkel-style view of how smaller dynamics mirror—rather than escape—the wider world. The glimmering, uptempo “Summer Windows” begins with “I wish that I could tell you / What I’m thinkin’ about / Oh, I wish that I could walk into your house,” and ends with watching the news, absorbing the broken-heartedness of a diner full of people. One personal disconnect is always a sign of a broader disconnection—the same way it can feel like when one person starts to make sense, they all do.

The first half of the record feels energetic, with the dreamy, indie-pop hooks of “Float Away” and the playful, more rock-tinged “My Sister in Jesus Christ”—the latter laced with irony, but too earnest for the irony to become the main point, as the second half of the track moves into a grainier territory. One of the most moving songs is the dialed-back, acoustic “Henry,” which evokes a storytelling style reminiscent of that of John Prine—as Ewald sings about a boy in Georgia who longs to emulate Charles Mingus.

For an album with such a relaxed, shade-dappled feel, the lyrics make up something almost surprisingly restless. On “Strange Weather,” it’s “I don’t wanna think about you anymore”; on “Summer Windows,” it’s “I wish that I could tell you what I’m thinking about.” But, by “Easter,” this searching resolves into something that does indeed feel like death—or, at the very least, a dream. Guided along by steady guitar strums and lullaby-gentle vocals, the divine finds its way into Americana here, in a trombone, in an offering of potluck casserole, on a black sand beach.

Midway through Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, Ewald’s melodic singing on “Bobcat Club” offers a kind of synthesis of wandering through settled feelings that wrestle with each other. In another track of even-paced guitar—punctuated by a more whimsical keyboard in the background—we’re watching two lovers from the outside, sitting without making a sound, alone just the two of them, watching “the big wheel spinnin’ there on the edge of town.” You could project almost anything onto this; You could see them as lonely, with nothing to say even to each other—they’re the only people around to listen.

Or, you could read the song through the lens of the outward speaker, the one who’s spent so much of this album just barely on the outside—the one who, in “Strange Weather,” called out wistfully, “Oh, to be a stranger on the street.” This figure is looking in on the ones they’re wondering about, the ones who aren’t quite here—even with the glass being as thin and as clear as it sometimes is. You could see this silence as being beautiful, as being a sign of the type of connection we’re often able to feel but not quite articulate. There’s no attempt to communicate through words on Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, so nothing can fall short. Across these songs, love is something felt through someone’s presence next to you: reading a sign, their hand on a drink next to your own. That’s what these lovers and characters are maybe feeling, and that’s the wordlessness these songs offer: a quick spotlight of how simple it looks, watching them watching the big wheel.

 
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