From furia
Bill Janovitz: Up Here
6 September 01

If we're lining up icons of the old notions of American alternative music for conversion to new ones, Buffalo Tom singer Bill Janovitz can't be far behind Grant-Lee Phillips. Buffalo Tom's early albums were murkier than Grant Lee Buffalo's, born of grim New England thunderstorms instead of Western desert heat, but the two bands followed roughly parallel evolutions, and if Copperopolis was a salute to a dying way of life, and an attempt to understand which of its values ought to be preserved (and whether by "preserved" we mean kept alive or stored in a museum), then Let Me Come Over was the internal version, what it feels like to try to live amidst dying, and Smitten, years later, was part of a portrait of how claustrophobic desperation can be slowly transmuted into radiant faith. Buffalo Tom had a guest-appearance on My So-Called Life (back before Buffy's The Bronze gave random TV-writers' favorite semi-obscure bands a regular venue), and Grant-Lee Phillips had a recurring cameo on Gilmore Girls. In fact, just to complete a particularly meaningless connection, Mobilize was released by the Cambridge label Zoë, which is also currently home to Juliana Hatfield, who also appeared on MSCL. (Note, for future reference, that this line of association could also get us from the Violent Femmes to the Bangles, should any occasion for that arise.)
But however right conditions were for Bill Janovitz to make a burbling techno record, and however intriguing you do or don't imagine that such a thing might have been, this isn't it. It is, instead, arguably an even more restrained and acoustic set than Janovitz's first solo album, Lonesome Billy. But where Lonesome Billy sounded tangential and uncompleted, to me, Up Here starts sounding like Janovitz has realized that as the logistics of making Buffalo Tom records become increasingly problematic, his solo work is going to have to develop some identity that doesn't depend on them. Lonesome Billy found him discovering that it was fun to work on a little project of his own; by Up Here he's realized that it can also be serious. Most notably, I think, this means that there is no requirement that these songs sound like they would never have ended up on a Buffalo Tom record. A few of them are left-overs from band days, but I wondered on much of Lonesome Billy if Janovitz was deliberately sandbagging, and here I don't. "Atlantic" is a gorgeous, sparkling, finger-picked folk-ballad, nudged from folk towards rock only by the deep, assertive reverb on Janovitz's vocal, and although it and Runrig's "The Mighty Atlantic" have fundamentally different densities, to me they have traces of the same awe. "Best Kept Secret" edges towards country, with Phil Aiken adding the world's most understated honky-tonk piano part and Janovitz obdurately refusing to affect the mandated Southern drawl. "Up Here" is deadpan enough for me to imagine that there's a version of it on some old Judy Collins or Joan Baez record. The hushed "Your Stranger's Face", with a clever duet combining Janovitz's two singing ranges, could almost be a Christmas carol. "Minneapolis" sets out to be a Steve Earle road ballad, and does a pretty good job in the verses, but once the choruses kick in Janovitz forgets the cynical sneer with which he's supposed to round off the ends of lines. He almost lets the storytelling take control (as it would in real folk music) in "Like Shadows", and then finally gives in completely for "Light in December", his exhausted-Simon-and-Garfunkel lullaby for his daughter Lucy. And the album's one brash deviation from the overall sedate mood is the rousing sing-along finale, "Long Island", like the Indigo Girls doing the Barenaked Ladies (or vice versa).
But the clear standouts on this record for me, and the songs I hope point the way towards the next one, are the three for which Janovitz again enlists Fuzzy singer Chris Toppin. Janovitz's voice is something like Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson's early bleat leavened with Tom Petty's nasality and Warren Zevon's gruff warmth, and Toppin's is a bit like Steve Nicks' airy elegance crossed with Tanya Donelly's breathy intimacy; it takes no great effort at all for me to imagine them becoming one of rock's great duos. Although Janovitz technically has the lead on the mournful, Jules Shear-caliber "Half a Heart", in that there are stretches when he sings but she doesn't and none of the reverse, the duet sections are unusually well-balanced, palpably two-part harmony instead of lead and backing. "Goodnight, Wherever You Are" sounds perhaps the most like Buffalo Tom circa Let Me Come Over, to me, Toppin's twangy backing vocal (and this time it's definitely backing) taking the place of everything the rest of the band would have provided. And "Like You Do", shakily self-conscious delivery notwithstanding, is a breathtakingly unironic love song of which John Denver would be proud, and Toppin's muted second vocal, joining in the latter half, probably qualifies as a dramatic cliché (man singing alone of his devotion, so you wonder whether it's returned, and then woman joining in to show that it is), but if many of our needs are long-standing, universal and familiar, then so too will be some of the most resonant songs.

glenn mcdonald